


Like You Mean It

by amorremanet



Series: the Brightside 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Ableism, Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Elementary School, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Middle School, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - School, Asthma, Autism, Autistic Castiel, Bastard John Winchester, Body Image, Child Abuse, Chubby Dean Winchester, Community: hc_bingo, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dysfunctional Family, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Ficlet Collection, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gender Dysphoria, Gift Giving, Hazing, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Dean Winchester, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, POV Alternating, Parents & Children, References to Suicide, Self Confidence Issues, Slow Build, Slurs, Triggers, Underage Drinking, Valentine's Day, Vomiting, Weight Gain, Weight Issues, weight loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, Cas, and Meg confuse everyone, including themselves sometimes, but ultimately, the only way that they make sense is in a group of three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Poison

**Author's Note:**

> This series of ficlets is being written for hc_bingo, with one prompt being used for each fic. The prompt used for the first fic was, "poisoning" and [this picture prompt](http://amorremanet.tumblr.com/post/52932894940). As the series progresses into Cas, Meg, and Dean's high school years, the rating will most likely go up; further tags will be added as the fic goes on.

Valentine's Day in Ms. Layla Rourke's first grade class was never supposed to be a complicated affair. The rules were ostensibly simple: no handing out cards, unless you give one to everybody; no bragging about all the valentines you got from kids in other classes, and no making anybody else feel bad about how you got more cards than they did; and most importantly, no giving out treats with nuts in them because Becky Rosen was allergic.

Ms. Rourke made cookies herself and hung up a jungle of red and pink streamers. She specially hand-made different maths exercises that were thematically appropriate, involving counting hearts and figuring out which of the fictional kids had more candy than the others, and she brought in heart-shaped glitter and pink construction paper for arts and crafts time. But all that hard work went out the window when Cas Milton made a card for Meg Masters.

Not that Cas meant to derail the entire class's ability to enjoy Valentine's Day. He didn't even mean for the card to be any kind of nice. He made it during arts and crafts time, haphazardly folding a piece of printer paper in half. He had to use the printer paper because it was white and he knew from experience that Meg Masters hated the color pink. Besides, pencil marks, he figured, wouldn't show up as well on pink paper as they would on white. And he wanted his card to be perfectly understood, without any room for error or Meg getting other ideas about what Cas meant.

The front of the card just read _for Meg_ , and on the inside, Cas scribbled, _we have always been enemies and I hope it stays like that_.

Perhaps more telling than the message, though, was the little heart Cas drew around the words, _mortal enemies_. He tried to draw spikes around the heart, but that didn't change the facts of what it was. And it didn't change the fact that people noticed.

*******

When he tried to give her the card, Meg just huffed, put the card down on the desk, and asked what Cas thought that he was doing with this.

Unsure of what she meant or how else to respond, Cas shrugged and supposed that he was just trying to give her a card, because you gave cards to people who mattered to you on Valentine's Day. You gave cards to people who were important to you. That was just how things worked, wasn't it?

"If you _read_ it, it says that we're mortal enemies," he explained with a nod toward the card. "Well, mortal enemies are important people, too, right? Superman and Lex Luthor have to have each other or they don't have anything to do."

"I guess you're right," Meg said, shaking her head and tucking a lock of her long, black hair behind her ear. "But what're you so sweet on me for, Clarence? Why don't you go be sweet on somebody _nice_ like Becky? Not somebody who kicks people in the mud and gets time-outs all the time."

Cas sighed and looked down at Meg's desk. Eye contact was hard. Finding the right words was hard. But after a moment, he managed to tell her, "Because maybe I _like_ that you kick people in the mud. I don't want Becky to be my mortal enemy. She likes My Little Ponies and pink stuff and hugging people. Mortal enemies are supposed to be kinda difficult. And I think it's cool that you don't let anybody tell you what to do."

When he forced himself to look back up at Meg, she wore a huge, toothy grin—and without getting up from her desk, she promptly kicked him in the shin. "Don't tell anybody," she said, "but I think it's cool that you don't let anybody stop you from acting like a total freak."

Cas wasn't sure what Meg meant by that—then again, he was never really sure of what anybody meant by anything—but as he went back to the arts and crafts table, he didn't feel like, "total freak" was quite the insult that Meg probably meant it to be. Or, well. He assumed she meant it as an insult because everybody else who called him a freak was trying to hurt his feelings. But something about the way she said it now felt different.

Cas didn't know why, and he didn't know how, just that everything about the phrase felt _different_. Which was weird, and somewhat disconcerting—but at least he had crayons and paper on which to draw himself fighting fire-breathing dragons.

*******

He didn't get long to draw, though. While Cas was halfway through his picture, Dean Winchester invited himself to sit down opposite him and glared at Cas until he turned his eyes away from the crayon intricacies of his dragon.

He furrowed his brow and frowned at Dean, but it didn't make Dean's facial expression make any more sense. It didn't make Dean's deep, glowering lines and his hunched shoulders explain themselves at all. Mostly, it just made Cas huff and wrinkle his nose in the way that Dean always said made him look like a bunny. Which didn't strike Cas as being particularly helpful because, unlike all the other times this happened, his nose didn't make Dean laugh. Instead, it just made him hunch his shoulders more, which in turn made Cas frown at him harder.

"What d'you think you're doing?" Dean demanded, folding his arms over his chest, hugging himself so tightly that it had to hurt. He'd never admit that he was pouting, but he was definitely pouting. Cas recognized this from all the times when Dean's mother said he'd have to wait for a slice of pie.

Rolling his eyes in the way he'd learned from watching his big sister Anna, Cas said, "I think I'm coloring. Do you want to use some of my crayons?" This seemed like a good way to reach out to Dean. They colored together all the time. So why would now be any kind of different?

Dean rolled his eyes right back. "Don't be stupid, Genius. I meant with Meg. What d'you think you're doing with _Meg_. Why were you talking to her just now. And what was that thing you gave her?"

"I made her a card for Valentine's Day because she's my mortal enemy and mortal enemies need to know that they're important too?" Cas squinted at Dean, searching his face for any sign that he understood what was happening, then explained, "It's like Superman and Lex Luthor. They're important to each other because they have to have each other. Superman can't save the world if Lex Luthor isn't doing bad stuff, and Lex Luthor doesn't have anybody to fight without Superman. Except Meg's not really like Lex Luthor. She has too much hair and she's kinda more like Catwoman."

"Well that's just _fine_ because _you're_ not a really good Superman, either," Dean snapped and kicked at Cas under the table. It didn't really hurt, but at the same time, it didn't make any sense. "Superman doesn't bail on his best friends, Cas. Superman's always there for them and he doesn't go palling around and being friends with _Catwoman_."

"Except that Batman and Catwoman are friends sometimes? Which would make her friends with Superman, because he's friends with Batman. And anyway, Meg's not my _friend_ , she's my _mortal enemy_. It's just that that makes her special. And don't you have a Catwoman toy?" Why they were talking about comic books at a time like this, Cas had no idea, but the whole situation made him slouch in his chair and start pouting himself. "Why're you being mean to me?"

Dean kicked at him again, and this time, it actually hurt. Made Cas whine out an _owww_ and everything. "I'm mad at you because _I'm_ your best friend, not Meg. But you gave her a card instead of me. That's not how it's supposed to _work_. Especially since she's _poison_ and she always will be."

"Why do you want a card that says we're mortal enemies?" Maybe Cas didn't understand—he had no idea what he'd done wrong—but he didn't see the point in starting a fight, either. "I'm gonna go play Lego blocks with Chuck and Victor," he told Dean coldly. "Don't touch my dragon."

*******

At the end of the day, Cas still doesn't know what he's done wrong. He supposes that it doesn't really matter, though: Dean's mad at him and that's the most important thing. As he puts on his coat, all he wants is to fix this—but then he notices the card in his cubby, sticking out from under one of his books. Frowning at it, Cas takes the thing out and blinks at it, which doesn't make the card make any sense, but apparently, today is just a day for things not making sense.

On the front, there's a crude drawing of Superman and Batman, one he recognizes as Dean's handiwork because Dean drew Batman bigger than Superman. Not that Cas thinks Dean meant to, but he likes Batman better, so he always draws Batman bigger, even though Superman's got more powers. The inside doesn't make sense either, not considering that Dean's mad at him, but at least it says, _best friends forever_ , which Cas guesses means that Dean won't stay mad at him forever.


	2. Truce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt used: "hospital stay."

In second grade, Cas's Grandfather Milton goes into the hospital and Dean has no idea what to say. He just knows that he has to say _something_ , anything, even if it's only that he's sorry. You're supposed to say something when your best friend's Grandpa could maybe die at any minute, but what words can Dean find to make anything better? "I'm sorry" doesn't really go far enough, and Dean can't think of anything else.

Anyway, Dean's the first person to admit that he doesn't really know the first thing about grandparents or how to deal with the threat of losing them. Grandpa Samuel and Grandma Deanna died before Dean was born, and Grandpa Henry almost never acknowledges Dean or his family. He sends checks for Christmas and Sam and Dean's birthdays, but aside from that, he's never around. He's too busy out at Harvard or whatever university he works at—Dean doesn't know which one Grandpa Henry calls his home, just that it's a big, important one and that Dad hates this fact an awful lot. So, maybe Dean's not the best choice for who can make things better for Cas.

But no one else is trying anything, and Cas needs for someone to make things better for him. He's barely talked at all since his Grandfather went into the hospital. He never smiles anymore, and at lunchtime, he picks his way through his sandwiches and canned peaches, only rarely looking up from the table. He's always had a problem with staring at people when they don't want him to, but now he just stares into space sometimes, not really looking at anyone or anything that's in his way, but looking like he could disappear, run off into the distance at any minute.

He won't even argue with Meg anymore, which should be a sign of the end of the world coming at them, for all it's kinda happening right here and now, where Dean can see that it's for real. These days, Meg will poke at him and call him all kinds of names like Clarence and Choir Boy and she'll do everything she can to try and get a rise out of Cas—but Cas will only shrug and suppose that she has a point, though he still doesn't know who Clarence is.

And it's the worst thing in the world, knowing that something's going on with Cas and that Dean's completely powerless to do anything about it. He's not a doctor. He can't wave a magic wand and make Cas's Grandfather get better. There's nothing he can do.

*******

When Dean tells his Mom everything about what's going on with Cas, she suggests going over to the hospital and Dean could kick himself for not thinking of that idea first. Every day after school, Cas waits for Luke and Gabe and Michael, his older brothers, to pick him and Anna up, and then they go to the hospital to be with their Grandfather because, the way that Gabe puts it, every day is one more chance for the old man to kick the bucket.

Gabe—or Gabriel, but nobody except Cas actually calls him that—is fourteen and Dean doesn't like him. He laughs at everything like it's all some big joke, and he's always doing things like calling Cas a freak or making fun of the way he doesn't like the way certain fabrics chafe on his skin. Michael's seventeen, so he can drive the car already, which Dean guesses must be a good thing, because Mr. and Mrs. Milton are almost never around. Luke is sixteen and he can drive, too, but he likes it better when Michael does that for them. Anna's nine and she's the best of any of them, because she's not a jerk and she doesn't let Gabe tell her what to do just because he's older and one time on the playground, she let Dean kick her cousin's butt because Ian Balthazar was picking on Cas. Having Anna around is bound to be good for Cas.

But all of Cas's brothers kind of suck and as Mom drives him over to Lawrence Memorial, Dean's not looking forward to seeing any of them. He'd almost stay at home instead—and even if this was her idea, Mom would probably like that one better, since she wouldn't have had to wrestle Sammy into his car-seat—but Cas needs somebody with him who isn't a total jerk. Somebody more than Anna, Dean means, because Anna's great, but she can't handle everything herself. It's not exactly the easiest thing, putting up with how your Grandfather could die at any minute. Anna's gonna need some backup, and besides, Cas is Dean's _best friend_. Best friends stick together through everything. That's the rules.

There's just one problem, though, and she comes running at the elevator, right as the doors start closing. She screams out, _Wait! Please_ , and Dean pushes the button to hold the doors—and then Meg stumbles into the cab with an older, salt-and-pepper-haired guy in tow. They have the same lips and similarly square-ish jaws, so Dean guesses that he must be her Dad, but he can't focus on that for too long because Meg's a pretty weird sight herself. She's changed clothes since school got out, putting on a plaid skirt and a black button-up top and a pair of black patent leather Mary Janes instead of her usual sneakers. Never mind the way she's carrying a bouquet of flowers.

"Hey, Dean-o," she says, looking at him sidelong and then smiling up at Mom like that makes her look any less like Satan. "Hi, Mrs. Winchester."

"Shut up, Meg," Dean huffs, and promptly gets tapped on the back of the head. He furrows his brow and glares up at Mom, and all she has to say is, _be nice_ like Meg deserves anybody being nice to her. But since you're not supposed to say anything if you can't say something nice, Dean keeps his mouth shut. Besides, Meg might be here for some reason other than seeing Cas. They're supposed to be mortal enemies—why would she even come to see Cas in the first place?

But then she and her Dad get off on the same floor as Dean and Mom and Sammy. And then Meg heads in the same direction that they do. And then she stops outside of the same room as Dean, the one with, "Milton, J." written on the little placard that lists the patients. And before this whole thing goes any further, Dean huffs and drags Meg aside by her elbow. Pulls her down the hall to the vending machines, where their Mom and Dad can't hear them talking and where Dean's not gonna get told to _be nice_.

"What d'you think you're doing here?" Dean demands, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at Meg, because that might make her take him seriously.

All she does is shrug and roll her eyes. "I'm here to see Cas, same as you. What's so wrong with that?"

"I don't know, maybe the fact that you're _poison_ and his _mortal enemy_ and about fifty jillion other things that are bad and wrong with you and reasons why you shouldn't be allowed to be here."

"Like you're some great best friend. You didn't even bring him _flowers_ —"

"What's Cas even gonna _do_ with flowers?"

"I don't know, but you're supposed to bring flowers when you visit people in the hospital, my Dad said so. It means you're sorry about what's happening to them and hope they get better soon. Or hope their Grandpa gets better soon, but that part's not important." Shaking her head, she mirrors Dean's pose, arms folded over her chest, flowers resting over one arm. "You know we're really not so different, right? How many times have _you_ got detention for fighting?"

Dean huffs and wrinkles his nose at her. "I'm not like you. You fight people for no reason. Every time I've ever gotten in a fight with somebody, it's been because they picked on my friends, or on me, or on me _and_ my friends—"

"Like I go around and start fights just because I feel like it. Just because you don't know my reasons doesn't mean that I haven't got any."

"Go home, Meg. Cas probably doesn't want to see you anyway."

"What do you know about anything? You're not Cas. If you're such a good best friend, then why don't you let him tell me to leave himself?" She arches her eyebrow at Dean like a dare, then tells him, "Look, if Cas wants me to go away, I'll go away. But if he wants to let me stay, then I don't wanna hear anything about it from _you_ , okay? We're both here for Cas, right? So how about we try actually being here for Cas, instead of turning it into some stupid contest about who likes him more."

"We don't need to have any stupid contest about who likes him more because I'd beat you into next week," Dean says, and sighs. "But fine. We're both here for Cas. And I'll put up with you if he says you can stay—but don't think this means I don't still hate you or anything."

Meg rolls her eyes again, and reaches out to shake on their deal. "Oh, trust me, Dean-o, I wouldn't want it any other way."


	3. Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "major illness."

Meg's not really sure how it happens, but after visiting Cas at his grandfather's bedside, the three of them settle into something that kind of works, in its own way. She and Dean aren't really friends, because they say that they're not friends, but they get along in a weird sort of way.

It helps that Cas is there, because they both like Cas and neither of them wants to make his life any harder than it would be otherwise—that's pretty much the whole reason why they can talk to each other peaceably when Cas is involved. Not because they actually like each other or anything like that. Decidedly nothing like that. Of course not—why would they actually like each other?

Just like that, in sixth grade, when Meg starts noticing that something's off about Dean, it's not because she actually gives a crap about him. She only picks up on anything because it's weird, the way that Dean stops riding his bike to school with her and Cas, and starts walking by himself instead. When she tries to call him on it, he just says that riding his bike anymore makes his chest hurt—it aches like it's on fire and leaves him feeling like he can't catch a breath and his solution is to stop riding his bike instead of going to see a doctor.

Next, he quits fighting back as much when Meg tries to shove him around, stops pushing her back and gets easier to wrestle, even though he's bigger than she is and likes to brag about being stronger. Once, when she knocks him to the plush carpet of Cas's bedroom, pins him down by his arms, he starts coughing and wheezing like he's gonna die—Meg actually has to pull back and get off of him and Cas actually puts his book down and pays attention, just because they can't be sure that Dean's really okay. They watch him hacking up a lung and Cas says that they should do something, they should really, really do something, but neither of them has any idea what could possibly help Dean.

And sure, he calms down in a couple minutes, gets his breathing back under control—but you don't just forget about a thing like that. You don't just watch some kid you kind of, sort of constantly hang out with spasm on the floor like a dying fish and then pretend it never happened.

Except that this seems like exactly what Dean wants to do. Except that, even when he goes into coughing fits in the middle of lunch, he doesn't seem to get that this might be a Problem with a capital _P_ because maybe it's just Meg, but she's pretty sure that _breathing_ is kind of important. Except that when Cas suggests that Dean tell his parents that he hasn't been feeling well, Dean just shrugs and says it's not a big deal—after all, he always gets his breath back eventually, so whatever's going on with him can't really be that wrong or that bad.

Meg kind of wants to punch him for that. She kind of wants to punch him because he's being stupid. Because there's no excuse that makes, "he always feels tired and sometimes, he just can't breathe anymore, at least he can't breathe without coughing" sound any kind of better.

Finally, though, Dean's Mom steps in and Meg totally isn't thankful or relieved about that at all. Or anyway, she's not any kind of thankful or relieved because she cares about Dean. Even when he comes over to Cas's place, flops down on the bed with Cas and Meg, and with his head in Cas's lap, starts whining about how his asthma diagnosis is going to ruin his life forever, Meg doesn't care about Dean at all. She doesn't care that he's going to get better now and she doesn't care that he's been sick and she doesn't care what anybody thinks about her brushing Dean's hair back off his face because that _doesn't_ mean she actually cares about him.

Meg's only concern here is that, if anything happened to him, she'd have to adjust to not having Dean around. And she doesn't want to do that.


	4. Happy New Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "bites."

The problem with getting the asthma diagnosis—at least, the problem from where Dean's sitting—is that Doctor Robert puts him on some medication called steroids with an inhaler for emergencies. And, sure, they help, they make Dean's breathing even out and they make his attacks more and more infrequent, but as a consequence of something to do with the meds, he starts, in Dad's words, porking out. Blubbering up. Turning into a regular old butterball.

In Doctor Robert's words, there's a direct link between taking steroid medications and gaining weight, and Dean proves that quite well. Every time he goes in for a check-up and to get his meds refilled, his weight's gone up to some degree or another, and Mom says that it's just because he's a growing boy, it's just because of his medication—but Dad tells the story very differently. Dad says the meds have nothing to do with anything; the problem's just with Dean. The problem's just that Dean has no self-control, always chomping into junk food and stuffing his face with Mom's pie.

Never even mind the fact that he can't play football or baseball, the way that Dad wants him to—the problem's just that Dean's a fat-ass with no capacity to restrain himself, no ability to tell himself _no_. Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter who's right or not. The end result is still the same: just like Doctor Robert said would happen, Dean gains weight.

By the start of seventh grade, Dean's gone up two sizes from when he started the meds, but at least he still weighs in at under a hundred-fifty pounds—he has no idea what he'd do if he even came close to weighing in at that much, but by his thirteenth birthday, he's crossed that threshold. Dean can't believe it as he stares down at the bathroom scale's screen, but checking his weight two more times gets the same results: the bright red numbers blink up at him, _152_. He only stands at five-foot-six and he weighs a hundred-and-fifty-two pounds, not a bit of it muscle, and looking at his chubby reflection, Dean swears to himself: he's starting a diet tomorrow. Just like Dad says he should.

By the start of eighth grade, Dean's shot up two inches, but he's put on another twenty pounds. His cheeks fill out, as do all the parts of him that used to be any kind of angular. None of his t-shirts can hide his round, pudgy stomach and sitting next to Cas and Meg at lunch starts feeling awkward—not because they say anything about his double-chin or his chunky thighs, but because both of them are thin and Dean isn't, not anymore. No one ever makes any oinking noises at Cas or Meg in the cafeteria. No one calls them, "lard-ass" or, "whale boy," or, "blubber-butt," or anything else like that. No one ever goes out of their way to make them feel like crap over how much they weigh. Just over the fact that neither of them gets on well with anybody but Dean, because Meg's insults burn everyone around her and Cas mostly doesn't like anyone but them.

And sure, Meg calls Dean, "tubby," sometimes, but she also punches anybody else who makes fun of his weight, so Dean guesses that it's okay when she calls him names. Besides, Mom says Meg only does it because she likes him. Which doesn't really make sense to Dean, because when you like someone, you're supposed to be nice to them, but Mom is smart, and Mom knows things, so maybe she's right about Meg.

After Halloween—after Dean tips the scales at one-eighty-five—Dad starts making him weigh in twice a week and write all of the figures down on a clipboard in the bathroom. Dean's weigh-ins happen every Tuesday and Saturday, and keeping track of things even manages to help him out a little bit: two weeks after Halloween, at his next check-up, Dean's lost a whole three pounds; one-eighty-two still isn't great, and it's still more than he weighed in September, but at least he's lost some weight. Dean can celebrate that fact, and even Meg says that she's happy that he's happy about it. Which isn't the same thing as actually being happy about it herself, but on the other hand, he doesn't expect her to understand.

But that downward trajectory doesn't last. Dean's weight starts climbing again. The numbers at his weigh-ins get bigger and bigger, until Dean just stops weighing himself altogether. And while Dad sighs and rolls his eyes and tells Dean to get his act together, Mom just keeps putting out plates of Christmas cookies or asking Dean to help her in the kitchen. And Dean means to listen to Dad, he really does… but Mom keeps telling him that it's okay, that it's not his fault he's put on weight, that his father doesn't mean to be so harsh with him, he just worries about Dean and he can't express it right—especially since his weight might have a negative effect on his breathing. That doesn't really make things any better; it just makes Dean feel hungry, makes him itch to devour some more of Mom's peanut butter cookies.

He guesses that it all makes sense, though. It all makes sense because Dad's right: Dean's a fat-ass, Dean's an enormous disappointment, Dean's got no self-control.

Either way, things reach a head on New Year's Eve, while Dean's trying to get dressed for the party that Cas's parents are having. There's a specific pair of jeans that Cas asked him to wear, which is great because they're probably Dean's favorite jeans. They're dark blue denim and they actually hug him just right, instead of being too loose around the waist in order to fit his thighs or too constricting everywhere. He doesn't know why Cas specially asked him to wear them, but Dean's happy to oblige him—at least, he's happy to do so until he's finally wriggling into them. Until he's showered off and in his room and trying to put them on.

Getting his calves in goes over just fine, but the jeans hit their first snag around Dean's thighs. His stupid, fat thighs—a few weeks ago, Dean could get into these jeans, but now, getting them up over his thighs proves difficult. Wriggling and yanking gets them up over his legs, only for them to snag again around the swell of his butt. And jerking the waistband up to where it belongs—cramming his bottom into the seat of the jeans—presents another problem, namely: his belly shoves his fly so far apart that Dean just knows that there's no hope of getting the jeans zipped up—to say nothing of getting them buttoned. Not that Dean's the giving up sort, but… well. Both of these notions seem completely hopeless. He pulls on the flaps, tries to get them closer together, but all he succeeds in doing is frustrating himself and hurting his hands.

But Cas specially asked him to wear these things, so Dean has to try, doesn't he? Because Cas asked and because Cas is his best friend in the world. Because maybe Dean doesn't know why Cas wanted to see him in these jeans for New Year's, but maybe it doesn't really matter that much. So, Dean sucks in like Mom always tells him to do when he tries on clothes—he draws his breath in as deep as he can make it go and pulls his stomach in. Still, no luck. He manages to inch the zipper up a little bit, but as soon as he lets his breath go, it rides back down again. Dean can't let that defeat him, though—he can't let these stupid jeans get the better of him. So, he flops down onto his bed, stretches out onto his back and sucks in again. Maybe having gravity pushing his stupid, pudgy stomach down will help him out, here. Maybe this will work out for him.

For a moment, it does play out right. For a moment, everything goes the way Dean wants it to: he holds his breath and manages to get the button done up. He manages to get the zipper zipped. Sure, the fabric chafes against his skin, and when he lets his belly go, the waistband slices quite unmercifully into his soft, squishy flesh—but still, he won this battle. He got the jeans on and that's a victory. At least, it seems that way until he sits up again. Until the waistband carves that much harder into his belly and his sides. Dean worms his fingers underneath the thing, trying to stretch it out even just a little bit, trying to put some more space between his skin and the fabric, but it doesn't help at all. And when he takes another deep breath, everything seems to quiver—everything seems tighter than a violin string, just waiting to snap, or break, or fall apart.

But Dean lets his belly flop out again and nothing happens, so he takes still another deep breath. And then another one. Nothing continues to happen, so Dean keeps breathing, keeps cycling through the process of sucking in and letting his stomach slump back out again, and then— _Snap! Ping!_

Before he's even realized what's going on, Dean sighs in relief—then he looks down at the pale, plump expanse of flesh that surges forward into his lap. He watches as his belly shoves the flaps aside. Eyes darting around the floor, he spots it, sitting there between his feet: the button from his jeans—he's gotten so fat that he burst the button off his jeans. Dean's cheeks flush hot and his ears burn, even with no one around to witness this—but these jeans fit him… these jeans _fit him_. At least, they fit him just fine before Christmas, and Dean can't have put on _that_ much weight since then. Can he have? Lip trembling, Dean runs his fingertips down the curve of his gut, presses them into his flab and grabs a roll of pudge up in his hand. A lump starts swelling up in his throat at how much paunch he comes up with, at exactly how big his fat-roll is.

His heart sinks into his stomach like it's wearing cement shoes and his stomach turns over, flops around like he does when he has an attack. For a moment, it's all Dean can do to stare at the floor and wonder how he let himself slip up this badly, get this big. He doesn't even know how big he really is, but he's guessing that he must be huge. Maybe he's finally broken two-hundred pounds. Maybe he hasn't, though—maybe there's still time to pull himself back before he hits that milestone. But he wouldn't be surprised if he's really gotten that big, or even bigger… Like Dad says, Dean has no self-control. None of this would've happened if he had any self-control. If he had enough sense to reign in his appetite and tell Mom _no_ when she offers him pie or other fat-ass-making junk food.

Dean sighs—how long has it been since he stepped on the scale like Dad wants him to? Weeks, definitely. But since his favorite jeans don't fit him anymore, since he can't wear them tonight like Cas wanted… He's probably more than overdue for a weigh-in, considering that. He wiggles out of his jeans and into a t-shirt. He tries to ignore how tight the t-shirt is around his stomach, how it rides up ever so slightly, exposing a strip of pale, stretch-marked skin, and how he can make out the indent of his belly-button in the mirror. He looks both ways like crossing the street, then pads across the hallway to the bathroom and locks the door behind him. He can't have anybody walking in on him while he's like this. This moment needs to stay between Dean and himself.

True, Sammy might not understand what's going on—well, he's smart enough to recognize that Dean's let himself get fat, but he probably wouldn't understand the rest of it, like why Dean cares so much that he's gotten fat or why Dad gets so upset about it all. Really, Dean's more concerned about their parents coming in right now. He can't stand to hear Mom tell him he's a growing boy and that he really shouldn't get so hung up about his weight, he's probably getting ready for a growth spurt, anyway. More than that, Dean doesn't need Dad to storm in and tell him what he already knows, what the scale's going to confirm. Hearing Dad tell him how fat he's gotten is the last thing that Dean needs right now—the very last thing.

Biting hard on his lower lip—so hard, he's worried that he might make himself bleed or something—Dean closes his eyes and steps up onto the scale. When he opens his eyes again, the bright red numbers blink up at him: _197_.

One-ninety-seven. A hundred and ninety-seven pounds. One, nine, seven. Dean swallows thickly and tries in vain to tug his t-shirt's hem back down. Every time he yanks it into place, it defiantly rides back up. He steps off the scale and shuffles over to the wall, where the clipboard's still hanging on the nail that Dad put there for it. As much as he doesn't want to write this number down—as much as admitting to it will make Dad get angry and make the whole situation somehow more real—Dean picks up the pen that's tied to the clipboard. He scribbles down the date and how much he weighs on a new line. Glancing up at the line above it makes another lump well up in his throat: the last time he weighed in, he only weighed one-eighty-two, which means he's put on fifteen pounds in just a couple weeks.

Turning, Dean stares at his reflection, at how disgusting he looks, like his chubby body's fighting to push its way out of his skin. Fussing with the hem of his t-shirt, Dean decides: he can't keep living like this. He's only three pounds away from crossing the line into the two-hundreds, and that's probably the point of no return. For his New Year's resolution, he's going to lose this extra weight—all of it, every single pound. No matter what it takes him, he's going to do this thing. He has to do this for himself before it gets too late to save him. Already, it's so close to being too late, Dean can almost taste the futility.

And in the meantime, he'll just have to wear one of the new pairs of jeans he got for Christmas to the party. They're a bigger size and they fit him better—and sure, Cas will notice that they aren't the right jeans, but Dean will just have to burn that bridge when he gets to it.

*******

Dean doesn't mean to bring all this up with Cas and Meg, he really doesn't. For one thing, he doesn't expect their skinny asses to understand—how could they possibly understand what it's like to know how fat they've gotten when neither one of them is fat? For another thing, though, they're hidden away in Cas's room while the adults have their party and while Sam hangs out at Jake's with him and Andy—this is supposed to be a happy gathering, relief that the old year's over and some kind of excitement about the new one starting up. Dean doesn't want to be a Debbie Downer and ruin Cas and Meg's night just because he's gotten too fat to be allowed.

But then Meg has to go and mention New Year's resolutions. From her perch in the far corner of Cas's bed, she has to start going on about how her dad and her therapist both say that she should resolve to get in fights a little less, because of the dangling threat of suspension, if not because she's actually getting less aggressive—then she asks what Dean's and Cas's resolutions are, with a devious smirk that says they'll both tell her what they're planning, unless they want her to start causing a huge scene. Or wrestling them to the floor, which she's more than capable of, even considering how much more than her Dean weighs. She probably has an easier time wrestling Dean than Cas, because Cas can at least fight back without worrying that his lungs will start to spasm.

Up on his bed, Cas shrugs and supposes that he doesn't have any resolutions. "I don't see the point in arbitrarily deciding to change things just because it's a new year," he explains. "If someone really wants to change things about themselves and their situation, then the responsibility falls on them to change things without there needing to be a special occasion for it."

"Yeah, alright, Professor. We get the point: you're a practicalist or whatever," Meg huffs and gently kicks his side. Watching from the beanbag chair, Dean notes that the only thing Meg manages to do is jostle Cas's sweater a bit—Cas's sweater that hangs around his lanky torso, unlike Dean's, which is new and fits him decently but still chafes against his t-shirt, shows off his belly too much for him to be completely comfortable. He folds his arms over his stomach as though this will actually hide anything about his body, and he flushes hot pink when Meg turns to him and asks, "What about you, Dean-o? You have any resolutions, or are you on Team Boring with Cas over here?"

Dean means to lie. He means to make up a story about how his resolutions are to focus better in classes and do better at school—but as he toys with the hem of his sweater, what comes out of his mouth sounds more like, "Well, I wanna kiss somebody. Like, a real kiss, too. But obviously, that's not gonna happen for a while, 'cause first, I need to get skinny enough to kiss—skinny like you two, like I bet you've both kissed tons of people, you're so thin—nobody's ever gonna kiss my fat ass the way it is now, right? So… yeah, that's my New Year's resolution. Lose a bunch of weight, get skinny, and then kiss somebody."

The room goes silent around him and Dean just knows he's blown it, big time. His ears start burning and the back of his neck itches, and when he looks up at Cas and Meg, both of them just look confused. Brows furrowed, they blink at him and say nothing—at least until Cas pipes up, "I've never kissed anyone either, Dean?"

"Yeah, neither have I," Meg says, wrinkling her nose like she's just caught a whiff of rotting garbage. "And what does us being thin or you being kinda chubby have anything to do with kissing people?"

Dean shrugs and scratches at the back of his neck—he tries a few times to say something, but all he comes up with are half-baked syllables and a bunch of stammering, which probably makes him sound ridiculous. At least, it certainly makes him feel ridiculous—not that being called to explain himself didn't already do that enough. Besides, why should he have to explain himself at all? Isn't it obvious, what he's talking about? Doesn't everybody just know what he's trying to say? It's just commonly accepted facts, after all—everyone should know what he's saying and it should all make sense to them, but Cas and Meg keep staring at him, waiting for him to say _something_ …

Finally, he blurts out, "Well, come on, isn't it obvious? You two, you're just… you're _skinny_ , and you're _pretty_ , and you're just… Maybe you've never kissed anybody, but people probably _want_ to kiss you—but me? I'm just… well, I mean, _look at me_." Using both hands, Dean pushes his belly forward and jostles it around like this makes his point for him, shakes his flab so there's no possible way that Cas and Meg can deny it. Immediately, he regrets this—his cheeks flush again, and he shouldn't have drawn attention to it, but since he did, he huffs and folds his arms over his belly again. "In case you two haven't noticed? I'm kind of disgusting—it's no wonder nobody wants to kiss me. They'd probably die of mortification if they wanted to, anyway. Because I'm gross."

Dean stares down at his lap, at his stupid, disgusting stomach and how his arms can't even try to hide it—and he blinks when he finds himself staring at someone's hand on his arm. He blinks some more when he looks up and sees Meg getting into his personal space. Without a word, she leans in and kisses him—not a quick peck on the lips, either, but a real kiss, like Dean wanted, like they've seen in movies. Her lips are soft when he sucks on them, and her lipgloss tastes like Dr. Pepper, and before she pulls back, she bites down on his lips, hard enough to make him whine. She smirks at that and chuckles under her breath.

"Don't go thinking that that really _means_ anything, okay?" she tells him, reaches over to ruffle his hair. "But, you know, if you really, really wanna kiss somebody? You're pretty enough for me."

"You're more than pretty enough for me, as well, Dean," Cas chimes in, and when Dean looks up at him, he's squinting at the scene before him, almost like he's jealous. "And since we are ruling that these kisses don't mean anything, am I to infer that it would be alright if I kissed you both?"

Dean grazes his teeth along his lower lip and feels his voice die in his throat. He has no idea how to even begin answering that question—but Meg answers for him, tells Cas that it's fine with her if he kisses both of them, and then, probably by way of making her point, she crawls back up on the bed and plants one on him, cups his jaw in her hand. They hold onto the kiss for so long that Dean wonders if they forgot him—and since they're both pretty, since they fit together in a more sensible fashion, Dean wouldn't blame them if they had—but before he even knows what hit him, Cas is down by the beanbag chair. Cas's chapped lips are rubbing up on Dean's, with the faintest aftertaste of Meg's lipgloss on them.

They take turns kissing each other for the rest of the night, and after that, it just becomes a thing they do. When they're alone and they're not trying to do homework, they kiss each other—Dean and Cas, or Cas and Meg, or Dean and Meg, or more than once, they try to negotiate kissing each other at the same time. It doesn't mean anything, though, because they say it doesn't mean anything. It's just some kissing, after all.


	5. It's All About Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "possession/mind control."

No matter what Cas and Meg say, and regardless of the fact that they keep kissing him, Dean sticks to his New Year's resolution about losing all the weight he's gained since starting on the steroids. Sometimes, it's hard to stick to his diet, especially when Cas and Meg and Sam all keep eating crap food right where he can see them do it—all of them can just eat cookies and cakes and pies without having to worry about it, but Dean is not so fortunate.

Between his medication and his natural appetite, which Mom once describes as, "voracious," Dean doesn't have the luxury of eating whatever the Hell he wants. Not if he ever wants to get skinny like Cas and Meg, anyway.

Which, as it happens, he does. They don't know it, and they probably wouldn't like it much, but their bodies are Dean's inspiration. Mom got him a digital camera for Christmas, and Dean fills both of the memory cards with pictures of Cas and Meg. Whenever it gets hard, keeping to his diet, Dean looks at them. He looks at the shots of Cas and the way all his t-shirts hug his slender frame, or at the shots of Meg's skinny legs sticking out from under one of her skirts.

He looks at those pictures and reminds himself of what he's working toward, reminds himself that he's never going to get to a point where photos of him aren't completely repulsive unless he sucks it up and restrains himself. Unless he exercises some goddamn self-control.

He gets things under control, too. It takes him some time to do it, but he gets used to skipping dessert. And he gets used to eating his vegetables first, he gets used to taking them for lunch when nobody else he knows does that. And he gets used to weighing himself every Thursday morning, before he does anything else.

And sure, it sucks to cut out all the things he loves. It sucks to have to tell Mom, "no" when she offers him a slice of pie, and it sucks to watch Sam wolfing down a slice of Mom's cinnamon apple pie, or her peach cobbler, or her chocolate cake while knowing that there's no way he can eat them without exploding. And it sucks even more to have Meg and Cas try to offer Dean sweets, knowing that he can't eat them because he's on a diet, and to have to watch their faces fall when he tells them, "no."

But Dad always nods in approval when Dean leaves food behind on his plate. And Dad nods in approval when Dean goes out jogging with Cas after dinner every night, even though he comes home winded and wheezing and sometimes fumbling for his inhaler, even when he sometimes uses it while he's out. And Dad nods in approval when he peeks at Dean's clipboard and sees the numbers that mark his weight slowly going down—sometimes, he even tells Dean, "good job."

He never tells Dean, "good job" about anything else. Not about his grades, or any of the times he brings home top marks on his tests, or anything but Dean losing the weight. That's all the motivation that Dean needs to keep up with everything.

By the time that school gets out for summer, Dean's grown another inch and he's lost twenty pounds. He's still not thin, though, not like Cas and Meg, and not like the models in the fashion magazines Meg doesn't want anyone but Dean and Cas to know she looks at. Doing things the healthy way—or following what Dean's doctor calls the healthy way—has been slow, and it's still left Dean with a tummy, with what Mom calls a tummy, anyway.

Most of his t-shirts don't show it off, but he can see it clearly when he strips before the bathroom mirror. It's all soft and pudgy and disgusting, sticking out from his midsection—but as he squeezes it between his fingers, as he gathers up a roll of fat and jostles it around, Dean tells himself that this won't last for long. When ninth grade starts, he _will_ be skinny.

He might even take his shirt off when he, Cas, and Meg go swimming at the lake. They're going up to Cas's parents' cabin soon, just for a summer getaway sort of thing, just the three of them, plus Anna and Gabriel, who are supposed to be responsible because they're older, like Dean and Cas and Meg can't handle taking care of themselves all because they're just fourteen.

Dean could take care of himself just fine, if he wanted to—Mom and Dad leave him and Sammy alone sometimes, and Dean handles that just fine. And okay, that's not the same thing as going to the cabin for three whole weeks, but that still doesn't mean that Dean has to like the idea of spending any kind of time with Gabriel.

It's really nothing entirely personal, really. It's just that Gabriel calls Cas a freak, and he calls Meg a bitch, and he calls Dean a fat-ass. Dean would rather willingly let his Dad down than spend time with Gabriel.

*******

On top of being an enormous dick-weed, Gabriel is, quite possibly, the worst babysitter ever.

For one thing, he pretty much never leaves the den, except to come out to the kitchen for something, or to break into Dean and Cas's room, trying to catch them making out with Meg—Dean's not even making that up, either. Gabriel actually tells them that he's trying to catch them making out— _because you're, like, twelve and twelve-year-olds don't need to be making out or getting pregnant with your demon threesome babies or whatever else on my watch_. Like that's not totally creepy.

He sleeps most of the day and stays up all night, just watching infomercials or playing Mario Kart by himself. When anyone tries to play with him—even Anna, who he supposedly likes—he casually tells them to fuck off, he's busy. And he seems to think that everyone should be capable of living off of frozen pizzas and ramen noodles and ice cream. Probably the only reason any vegetables get bought when they get to the cabin and he goes off to Kroger is that Anna insists on going with him and she actually has a good head on her shoulders.

Not that Dean, Cas, Meg, and Anna really need a babysitter. After all, Anna's sixteen and could've driven them all up to the cabin by herself—but Gabriel is twenty-one and Cas's parents insisted that he come up to the cabin with them, since he's not doing anything else with himself lately. He's taking some time off from college for some complicated mental health reasons that Cas sometimes alludes to, but never really talks about— _because they're not my issues to discuss or to make explicit, Dean; they're Gabriel's to tell people about, or not tell people about, as he pleases. Or as he doesn't please, more regularly_.

Which is fair enough, Dean guesses, but he still doesn't like the way Cas gets when Gabriel comes up in discussions, the way that Cas's eyes kind of glaze over and his voice gets unearthly calm and kind of detached while his hands fidget with the hems of his t-shirts or anything else he can get his fingers on. Dean still doesn't like how worried Cas gets about his brother—not least because Gabriel's a dick to Cas and Cas deserves to get treated better.

Meg thinks that Gabriel might've tried to kill himself out at his fancy-pants New York liberal arts school. Which would kind of probably make a lot of sense, with how Cas gets about the subject, but Dean has other things to care about instead of whether or not Gabriel's kind of suicidal. He has other things that are so much more important to him—like the way Cas sometimes looks at Gabriel like he's going to disappear, then won't race Dean and Meg down to the lake, even when Cas could beat Dean with both hands tied behind his back because Dean can't run that fast without his lungs trying to spasm out of his chest.

And like the way that high school's looming on the horizon, and being freshmen's going to suck, and there's nothing anybody can do about it—and like the way that Meg starting fights wouldn't even help that much, because she'd probably just get her ass kicked, or get herself in trouble with the administration, or otherwise end up in a world of hurt all because she tried to make everything suck less for Dean and Cas.

And like the way that there is seriously nothing in the cabin that Dean can eat—at least, there's nothing he can eat without getting a sick, twisting, guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach. By the end of day three, Dean's eaten all of the vegetables that Gabriel brought back from his excursion to the grocery store, and he doesn't even feel like he's eaten that much. He's made a few salads here and there, sure, and had some steamed broccoli, but they really should've had enough good food to last Dean for three weeks. There should've been more vegetables than this. Dean certainly thought there were more vegetables than this.

He tries to bring this up with Gabriel on the morning of day four, because Gabriel's still awake, so maybe he'll actually listen for once. He tries to ask for a ride to the grocery store, because there's no way that he can live on frozen pizzas and ramen noodles and ice cream, at least there's no way that Dean can live on this stuff without ballooning all over again—but all he gets is told to shut up and go bother Cas and Meg because they actually care about his bullshit problems. So, Dean tries to press the matter, which just makes Gabriel groan and flop out on the sofa.

"Seriously, Tubby," Gabriel tells him with a huff, lobbing one of the den's throw pillows at Dean's head and missing by a mile. "Why do you even care about being on a diet? For fuck's sakes, you've got Meg and my baby brother interested in you, and they don't care if you're kind of chunky—why do you really give a fuck about this dieting bullshit?"

Dean blushes, scratches at the back of his neck, and sighs. He thinks about trying to lie—but Gabriel's the guy who once convinced a cop that he was only speeding because he was late for a funeral for someone who died when he was sixteen. He's a better liar than Dean, and he could see right through Dean without breaking a sweat. "It's not… I don't want to lose weight for _them_ , and besides, they aren't interested in me like that," he says quietly, tugging on the hem of his t-shirt even though it's not riding up. "I'm doing it for me. And because my Dad thinks I should? And, like, he has a point about the health stuff, and—"

"Hey. Idiot. Listen to me: if your Dad thought you should run off and join the Marines like Michael, and go risk your life getting shot at and bombed and all kinds of other shit, would you fucking do it? _Would_ you?" The way that Gabriel glares at him suggests that there is only one right answer to this question, but Dean's mouth goes dry trying to think of what the answer could be, and he stumbles over every syllable he tries to put out there, and all he ends up doing is gaping and shrugging and shaking his head a little.

So Gabriel tosses another pillow at him, and actually hits Dean in the face this time. "Of fucking course you would," he snaps. "You and Michael _both_ , I swear to God. You've got your heads so far up your fathers' asses, you'd do every last thing they told you to, no matter what it was. Stop eating so you can lose weight—sure, Dad, whatever you say, Dad. Go off to Afghanistan, fighting in some unnecessary war for oil—right away, Dad, guess that sounds okay to me. Hell, they could tell you two to kill yourselves and you'd probably do it if it was for the greater good—good, stupid little soldiers. Good little soldiers who never question orders—that's all you and Michael are, and the way you're both going? It's all you're ever gonna be. Because _they've_ got you _mind-controlled_ and you sorry sons of bitches can't even see it."

Dean wrinkles his nose and furrows his brow and before he can think to stop himself, he says, "You know, my Dad was in the Marines, too. He fought in Desert Storm? And he came out of it okay, so… If you're worried about Michael? Yeah, it's gonna be bad over there, like really bad and everything, but… He might come out of it okay, too? And I didn't ever _stop eating_ , I just—"

"Seriously, what part of, 'go bother somebody else with your bullshit problems' isn't getting through your adamantine skull, Dean? I'm _busy_ —and give me my pillows back before you go."

*******

Dean goes out onto the deck after that conversation, walks right through the kitchen without stopping to eat anything and sits down on one of the reclining chairs with the long seats.

For a while, all he does is stare out at the horizon and the lines of trees, or down the hill at the lake, and he tries to ignore the hunger gnawing at the inside of his stomach. It's not exactly a new sensation—since he started dieting, there have been plenty of times when Dean's gone hungry, or not eaten as much as he's really, really wanted to, but that's kind of the whole _point_ of being on a diet, as far as Dean can tell.

All things considered, he expects someone to come out after him. He just never expects that someone to have bright red hair tied up in a ponytail—and even once he deals with the fact that it's Anna who came to see him, not Meg or Cas, he's not really sure why she's crossing her arms over her chest and arching her eyebrow at him like he did something wrong.

Dean hasn't done anything wrong—at least, he hasn't done anything wrong that he knows of—and there's no reason for Anna to be looking at him like that. But since she is, he curls up tighter around himself, hugging his legs to his chest and resting his chin on his knees. They don't say anything for a moment; he just has to deal with Anna staring at him, making a lump well up in his throat and his skin writhe like he's got bugs crawling around under it.

"Are you just not having breakfast anymore?" she asks as she slides the door closed behind her. "Maybe it's just me, but I thought that there was some rule about breakfast being the most important meal of the day?"

Dean shrugs and supposes that he's not really hungry. "Besides, you can't really call frozen pizza a breakfast food."

"Just because Cas and Meg are having frozen pizza for breakfast doesn't mean that you have to," Anna points out, sitting down on the other end of the chair. "We've got eggs, Dean. And eggs aren't so bad for you, right? Low calorie, high protein—"

"And probably kind of pointless," Dean huffs. "What am I supposed to eat when we run out of eggs, though? Gabriel won't take me over to the store, and you and Cas have spending limits on your credit cards, and my Mom only gave me so much money—"

"Dean, you're on _vacation_. You don't have your Dad spying on you all the time, so you can eat whatever you want." She reaches over and gently ruffles his hair. "And if you gain a little weight while you're out here, then so what? You're on _vacation_. It's okay—and anyway, you'll bounce back from this just fine. It's not gonna completely derail anything unless you let it."

And Anna's so earnest, so sincere in saying this, that Dean can't help but believe her. He goes inside for breakfast, and by the end of the day, the word _diet_ is all but completely gone from his mind.

*******

On the drive back home, Cas and Meg try to assure Dean that he'll be fine, that everything will be fine, that no one will even notice if he gained weight or not, but the first thing that Dad says when he picks Dean up at Cas's house is, "Hrmph. So much for that good diet you were on."

And Dean deserves that—he knows he does—there's no way that he could've eaten like he did up at the cabin without him putting on some weight. But it's not that much, he tells himself. It's a setback to his diet, sure, and his tummy's definitely gotten bigger, softer, pudgier—but he'll bounce back from this if he applies himself, just like Anna said. And it's not really a big deal, is it?

Dean even lets himself believe that. He lets himself believe that everything's going to be fine—until he gets home and climbs up on the scale for the first time since he left. Until the red digital numbers blink up at him, _189.5_ , and his heart sinks like a lead fucking brick. So much for that good diet he was on, indeed.


	6. Armor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "arena." Also, Lila Beth is meant to be this verse's Lilith.

"If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, little brother: you're building this up to be a lot more than it actually is."

Cas huffs and rolls his eyes, tilts his head up so he can adjust his tie, never letting his eyes drift that far from his reflection. "It's the first day of high school, Anna," he tells her quite simply but without understating its importance, because she clearly has no idea what she's talking about. Even having gone through the first day of high school for herself already, she has obviously forgotten how important it is, if she really thinks that she can convince him that this isn't important.

Anna doesn't move from her perch on Cas's bed. "You know you don't have to dress up for the first day of school or anything like that, right?" she says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. "You can just wear your jeans and a t-shirt, if you want to. Not jeans and… whatever the Hell the rest of this is."

"Well, perhaps I feel like dressing up, knowing that Mother will want to take her customary first day of school pictures. For which you should probably wear something other than your ripped jeans." Not that Cas expects Anna to listen to him. Rules, as far as she's concerned, are made to be broken, and that includes flouting the ritual of taking first day of school pictures.

Besides the issue of Mother and her pictures, Dean and Meg are both supposed to be dressing up, too. And Cas hardly considers himself that dressed up to begin with. Jeans and sneakers are hardly fancy, even if they are paired with a short-sleeved button-up, a tie, and his favorite navy vest (which, he notes, is hugging him ever so slightly tighter since he's spent the last month in practices with the junior varsity soccer team—Cas has gotten taller and put on muscle, and for all he can still button the vest, it might be a shade too small. He's going to wear it anyway, though, because Meg says that it brings out his eyes and he promised her that he'd wear it).

Sighing, Cas smoothes his hands down his sides, over the vest's soft fabric. He blinks at his reflection in the full-length mirror and straightens his tie again. He needs all of his armor to be perfectly in place today. Things will be difficult enough with his lack of understanding nuances firmly in place. The least Cas can do is try to make himself _look_ presentable.

*******

By the time the first day of school—the first day of ninth grade—rolls around, the last thing Dean wants to do is face going to school. Even if he's known all the other kids in his class since they were little, he still hasn't really seen most of them since June and… well, the results of this summer speak for themselves, and as he gets dressed, Dean can't stop worrying his hands up and down his plump midsection.

He never did bounce back from slipping up so badly in June. If anything, he's only gone and gotten heavier again—a fact his button-up shirt uncompromisingly highlights, hugging way too close to his frame, to his stomach, even though it's brand new and should fit Dean better. Oh, sure, he can button it up just fine, and he guesses he doesn't look too bad in it—it's dark green and Meg says that it brings out his eyes, which is why she wanted him to wear it today—but Dean certainly can't tuck it in or anything. Not without drawing attention to his thick, round belly and all the piled up evidence that dieting doesn't work so well.

At least, it doesn't work so well if your name is Dean Winchester and you're a weak-willed grunt who can't commit to anything.

Maybe he should ask Mom and Dad to get him liposuction for Christmas, that'd handle his stupid, so-called weight problem. Except that's probably expensive, more expensive than they'd be willing to consider spending money on, and anyway, Dad would probably call it the cheater's way out. He'd call it the cheater's way out, and then he'd never forgive Dean for getting it, or for wanting it in the first place, or for getting so bad about his weight that it was ever even an option.

And Dean's pretty sure that weighing in at just over two-hundred pounds—two-oh-three, as of his last doctor's appointment—is pretty unforgivable itself.

But at least Dean's vest provides some armor: it's a darker shade of green, unlike his shirt and his jeans, it fits him loosely. He can do up all the buttons without any part of him worrying that they're going to pop off if he breathes funny, and with the way it fits him, it hides the fact that his shirt's too tight to be allowed. It can't hide the fact that he's gained weight again—it can't hide the fact that Dean is bigger than he's ever been—but there's still some give, some room for Dean to hide his body. When his jeans show off his flabby thighs and everything else betrays him, lets the rest of the world see how gross he's let himself become, his vest doesn't.

Mom even says that Dean looks very handsome when he comes downstairs for breakfast, and he knows she's lying, but it's still kinda nice to hear.

*******

Meg's armor is a black faux-leather jacket, one she found at Macy's at the back-to-school sales. She wanted to get a real one, made out of real leather, but Dad said she's still too young for a _real_ black leather jacket—not that she couldn't handle wearing one, of course, but it's more that she still has growing left to do and she'll probably just end up needing a new jacket in a few months anyway. Which is fair, Meg guesses, but it still doesn't change the fact that her jacket creaks a bit when she flexes her elbows—and not in the way she'd hoped it would, it's a weird creaking, like something about the jacket needs to get oiled up—and doesn't have that distinctive leather smell.

It's just not the jacket that she dreamed of wearing on the first day of school, and it's not the jacket she dreamed she'd own. But it looks nice enough with the rest of her outfit, she guesses. Stovepipe jeans with a black and blue and purple plaid skirt. The jeans tuck into her boots just like her black button-up tucks into her skirt, and if anyone asks her, she thinks that she looks damn good—like she's more than enough of a match for high school. Like she can take them on for all they're worth and give as good as she gets.

"Well, I think you look like a slut," says her little sister, Ruby, who's leaning against the doorway into Meg's room, watching her as she poses in front of her mirror, as she runs her fingers down and through her mess of wavy, dark brown hair. Meg rolls her eyes—because what does Ruby know, she only turned ten back in May with Dean's little brother, Sam—but Ruby insists, "No, really, sister. Your skirt's too short, even if you've got jeans on under it, it shows off way too much leg, and tucking your jeans into your boots is a total slut thing to do. Lila Beth Fremont _says_ so."

"Well, Lila Beth Fremont can kiss my ass. She's not the final judge of who looks like a slut or not—which isn't something she's got any right to say about anybody," Meg snaps. She looks over at Ruby's reflection in the mirror, at the way she rolls her eyes and pouts. "I mean it, Ruby. Calling somebody a slut is just bad for everybody. It makes them feel bad, it makes you _look_ bad, and it's just gross, so don't do it just because Lila Beth Fremont and her cronies do."

Not that she'd ever say this where Lila Beth Fremont could hear it, if only because of how much trouble she got in the last time she picked a fight with their neighborhood's precious princess. Lila Beth Fremont's a sophomore this year. Her Mommy is some kind of heiress and her Daddy owns his own candy-maker's shop—his chocolate's so good, he's sold it all over the damn country—and Meg and Ruby's Dad handles all the legal stuff for Mister Fremont's business, and because of this—because their fathers are sort of friends and deal with each other all the time—Meg and Ruby and Lila Beth are all supposed to get along. Meg's known Lila Beth as long as she's known Cas and Dean, but most of the time, she just wants to rip Lila Beth's face off.

"You really shouldn't be so _mean_ to her," Ruby says with a sigh that's almost plaintive. "She's really nice once you get to know her, and doesn't your boyfriend eat a lot of her Dad's candy? Like, a _lot_ , a lot?"

Fussing with her buttons, Meg wrinkles her nose and frowns. "What the Hell are you talking about? Since when do I have a boyfriend?" Between all the pictures of cute girls hanging up around her room and the way she kissed Casey Barrese at Lila Beth's end of summer pool party, Meg's not sure why nobody's asked her if she's gay yet. "I don't _have_ a boyfriend, Ruby."

Which just makes Ruby roll her eyes again, like Meg's missing some huge detail that everybody else can see. "You know who your boyfriend is, sister. I mean, you're going out with Dean Winchester, right? That's what Lila Beth said, anyway. She said first she thought you were a lesbian, but then she looked at how much time you spend with those two guys, and she thought you were going out with Cas Milton for a while, but then she decided that you'd never go out with him because he's a freak and you've got standards. Y'know, supposedly. Like, really, really _weird_ standards, if you _really_ think Dean Winchester's cute, but I _guess_ those are still standards."

Jesus Christ, not this bullshit again—Meg seriously thought she put this all to bed when she told Becky Rosen to stop writing gossip columns about her, Cas, and Dean for the middle school student newspaper. "I'm not going out with either of those two losers, Ruby—they're just my friends. And don't you start calling them losers, either. Only I'm allowed to call them losers." Meg huffs, and fusses with her hair some more, tucks some of it behind her ears, then adds on, "And don't start saying shit like Dean's not cute just because he's fat, okay? He's really sensitive about that stuff, and only I'm allowed to make fun of him for it. And it doesn't make him not cute in the first place."

"Yeah, because _that_ totally doesn't sound like you two are going out," Ruby drawls. "And it _does_ sound like you two are going out to me? Just in case you thought I wasn't being sarcastic or anything."

"I'm gonna kill whoever decided to teach you about sarcasm," Meg says right before deciding that she really needs to tie her hair back. It's not _that_ warm today, but it's warm enough that she wants it all off her neck. "Seriously—I don't care who it was, I'm going to literally kill them to death."

Ruby rolls her eyes a third time, like it's some kind of charm, and hops off of Meg's bed. "I learned it from _you_ , dummy. And tell your _boyfriend_ that I said, 'hi.'"

*******

"Seriously, though, kids: you're all blowing this up into something that it's not. Something that's way bigger and more important than your first day of high school actually is."

Sure, Anna says that—she spends the whole drive over to Lawrence High saying that, or some variation of it—but Cas contents himself with the fact that, when he looks into the backseat at Dean and Meg, they seem easily as ill-at-ease as he is. If not more than.

All things considered, Dean is probably even more ill-at-ease than Cas is. Meg's trying to keep her jaw set and her eyes resolved, but she can't stop fussing with the sleeves of her new jacket—and frankly, Dean just looks like he's going to throw up. Which Cas wouldn't blame him for, in all honesty. Even if they weren't about to walk into a den of starved lions, Anna's driving leaves a lot to be desired.

As she pulls into a space in the student parking lot, she says again, "You're all making this into a big huge deal, and do you know what it's really going to be? It's really going to be getting your textbooks and a whole lot of getting to know you exercises. Besides, you've known most of these kids since forever—there's nothing new that they can use against you, okay?"

"It sounds so simple when you say it like that," Cas deadpans. "All of our anxieties have miraculously evaporated."

Anna rolls her eyes and tells him, "Fine—you want to act like you're a bunch of gladiators? Then be a bunch of gladiators. See what I care."


	7. Important Distinctions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "hazing." And Yuri is meant to be this verse's Uriel.

The cheap, thin ropes chafe on Cas's skin, but he keeps on wiggling, just keeps struggling against them. He rubs his wrists up against each other—or as up against each other as he can get with the rope between them—but it doesn't make a difference. It just doesn't make any kind of difference—Caleb tied his knots too well, and it probably has something to do with him being a Boy Scout. They're supposed to learn how to tie knots in Boy Scouts, right?

Yuri Wisdom sighs as though the last possible thing he cares about in the entire world is whether or not Caleb, their JV soccer team captain, learned how to tie knots in the Boy Scouts. Yuri's probably rolling his eyes, but given his and Cas's current position—tied up back-to-back, to a goalpost on the football field—Cas can't be sure. Either way, Yuri supposes that the Boy Scouts teach kids how to tie efficient knots, last he heard—in fact, there's probably some kind of merit badge specifically for tying knots especially well or with notable flair or something like that.

"Not that it really _matters_ ," Yuri huffs, knocking his elbows against Cas's as he wriggles against their restraints. "Since, however you look at it, we are _still_ tied up to a goalpost for who even _knows_ how long."

"It can't have been _that_ long," Cas says, trying (and most likely failing) to keep both his voice and his outlook bright. Looking on the bright side of things is supposed to make matters better? "I mean, the sun isn't really setting yet— _and_ no one's come looking for us. If it had been that long, someone would have come looking for us."

At the very least, Dean and Meg should have noticed that Cas didn't meet them at Dean's house after practice. He was supposed to meet them there so they could get going on their biology workbook pages together, and Cas isn't sure about Yuri or about who his friends are aside from Cas, but someone will have noticed that he's not where he's supposed to be. Assuming that he's supposed to be somewhere in particular, and he probably is. Huffing, Cas rubs his back against the goalpost, tries rubbing his wrists against it as much as he can—it doesn't help the case of trying to get free, but it makes him feel like he's doing something. At least he can content himself with that.

"Oh, you're doing something, alright," Yuri tells him, utterly deadpan. "You're probably making the knots even tighter. I mean, if Caleb's such a _great_ knot-tier, then maybe he could tie them up so you'd make them tighter by trying to get out."

Cas guesses that this sounds reasonable, but that doesn't stop him from trying to get himself free. The sooner one of them gets out of his ropes, the sooner both of them can get free. "But anyway," he says, "it could be _considerably_ worse."

"We got tied up to a goalpost just because we're freshmen—by our captain and the rest of our team, who will back each other up if we try to complain to a teacher or the vice-principal, so it's our word against theirs—and they're probably just going to leave us here. My legs are starting to hurt, as if running laps didn't make them hurt enough. And there's no telling how long we'll have to wait for someone to save us. How could it _possibly_ be worse?"

"Well, this experience is supposed to bring us closer together and make us bond as a team through shared adversity? Which seems fairly admirable, if you ask me. They could've done this out of actual malice instead. Or we could be on the football team? Then we'd probably never get to play— _and_ I heard that they shoved Steve down a hill in a shopping cart? So, at least we don't have to deal with that." Cas huffs and goes quiet for a moment, struggling to think of a third reason why this isn't quite as bad as it seems. There's power in threes, and maybe having three reasons will convince Yuri that they aren't that bad off.

When Cas comes up with his third reason, it feels sort of pathetic, but regardless, he says: "And we _could_ be handcuffed to a laser that's about to destroy the world. Like Doctor Bashir and Garak in the episode where they get stuck in the holosuite. I should think that would be _much_ worse than this."

The roll of Yuri's eyes is audible as he says, "Cas, please. Pull your head out of _Deep Space Nine_ 's ass and focus on the real issue here."

"Focusing on the real issue here is just making you get _cross_ with me," Cas points out. "You'll forgive me if I find distractions more helpful than one of my friends being cross with me."

"Fine. If you want a distraction so badly, then how would you like to settle a bet for me?" Yuri pauses just long enough for Cas to agree, then slouches into the goalpost, knocking his elbows into Cas's again. "So, Rachel, Viktor, and I have this bet going on. The two of them think you're going out with Meg. They think that your whole worst enemies thing? That thing you two used to have going on was just a bunch of talk and that you're actually making out all the time."

Cas wrinkles his nose and frowns so deeply that his face hurts. "I'm not going out with Meg," he huffs. "Maybe we're friends now, but that doesn't mean that we're _going out_. And I mean, yes, I've kissed her? I've kissed her plenty of times but it doesn't mean anything, because we agreed that it didn't mean anything."

"So, you're definitely not going out with Meg, though? Like, absolutely, definitely not going out with Meg?"

Cas probably shouldn't roll his eyes, because it's probably fair enough that Yuri's confirming this—especially if he has a bet going on, not that Cas should _condone_ Yuri betting on Cas's personal life—but he rolls them anyway. "Don't ask stupid questions—I already _said_ that I'm _not_ going out with Meg."

"So, that means that you're going out with Dean, right?" Yuri jostles them around a bit, rubbing his wrists up against the goalpost and then goes on, "Because that's what I bet Rachel and Viktor. See, _they_ were all, 'Cas is definitely going out with Meg,' but then I was like, 'Excuse me, have you _seen_ the way that he and Dean look at each other? Because I have and it _screams_ that he and Dean are going out.' And that's how we made the bet. Winner gets twenty bucks from the loser—or _losers_ , in this case, since you're going out with Dean and that means I win."

Cas didn't think it was possible for him to frown anymore than he already was, but somehow, he manages it. "I'm not going out with Dean either, Yuri," he huffs. "And I think this is ignoring the larger problem of why my personal life and whom I'm going out with is of such interest to you, Rachel, and Viktor?"

Yuri makes a strange, disgruntled sounding noise. "But you have to be dating one of them." Once again, Cas tells him that he's not dating either Meg or Dean—and Yuri sighs so heavily that Cas almost feels _bad_ about the way he isn't dating either of his best friends. "So let me get this straight," Yuri says. "You're not dating either of them? But you kissed Meg?"

"I've kissed Dean, too, if that's so important. But it didn't mean anything either, because, again? We agreed that it didn't mean anything. But I am exceptionally fond of kissing both Dean _and_ Meg, for whatever that means to you? We all kiss each other, and it's quite enjoyable."

Yuri sighs again, and for a moment—for one stupid, blissful moment—Cas actually thinks that they might be done with this exceedingly pointless conversation about his personal life. It's not even particularly good at distracting Cas from the way that he and Yuri are tied up—but then Yuri has to go and kill Cas's hope: "So you've kissed them both," he says as though he's puzzling out some great secret of the universe. "Which means they've both kissed you. You three are always at the Roadhouse together, or in study hall together, or going home together—apparently, to kiss each other all over the place. And you've _kissed_ each other—well, has Dean kissed Meg? And was there _tongue_ involved in any of this? It's a very important distinction, whether or not there was tongue."

"Of course Dean's kissed Meg—that's what, 'we all kiss each other' _means_ , isn't it? But it didn't mean anything when they kissed each other, either—and what does it _matter_ if there was tongue involved or not?"

"So that means that there was _definitely_ tongue involved?" Yuri, Cas imagines, is probably making some kind of beseeching expression, or else smirking as though he's won some great victory. Cas isn't sure which is the likelier option—but Yuri hasn't won anything. He certainly hasn't won any great victories over Cas—not even when he says, "Cas, the difference is _huge_. Tongue is the difference between you just kissing Dean and Meg, and you _making out_ with Dean and Meg. Which is a pretty big deal. Because if you're making out with them, but not going out with either of them? Then that makes you kind of a slut."

Groaning, Cas knocks his head back into the goalpost—he winces, and whines, and rather immediately regrets this action, but for a brief moment, it gives him some kind of relief. "Don't you think it's stupid, the way we use, 'slut' as a way to discredit people? And anyway, what does it make Dean and Meg if they've done the same thing?"

"Oh, they're sluts, too—but, hey, maybe you're all just being slutty together." Yuri shrugs, which once again knocks his elbows into Cas's arms. "I mean, you know that going out with them doesn't mean they're your soulmates or that you want to run off and get married to them or anything, right? Like, Rachel went out with Ian Balthazar for a couple of weeks over the summer, and all they ever did was just go to the Roadhouse for milkshakes and go to see _Ratatouille_ at the multiplex. And sure, going out could be more _serious_ , if you wanted it to be—but it doesn't _have_ to be, is all I'm saying."

Cas huffs and leans his head back again, gently this time. He goes quiet for a moment, pondering all of what Yuri's said, and for the sake of doing _something_ with himself, he jerks his wrists around again—which continues to do absolutely nothing, save for quieting his nerves. "In that case," he supposes, blinking up at the slowly purpling sky. "In _that_ case, then… maybe I'm going out with Meg _and_ with Dean. And they're both going out with each other. And… our arrangement is fairly peaceable—or as peaceable as it _can_ be when two of the three people involved insist on calling each other, 'bitch' and, 'asshole,' and, 'fuck-head,' and, 'loser,' and all manner of other _interesting_ epithets."

"So, they're basically like that _Much Ado About Nothing_ stuff we had to read for English last year? Like, they're Beatrice and Benedick, and you're Beatrice and Benedick's other boyfriend or something?" Yuri seems to think that he's being quite apt and clever in making this comparison—but Cas can't really appreciate the cleverness (much less respond to it with more than, _oh yeah, I guess so, that makes sense_ ) because he's far too busy boggling at how accurately it describes his current situation.

Not that putting a name to things means anything at all. It doesn't mean anything, because: a. Yuri _says_ that it doesn't mean anything, and he seems to be more informed about these matters than Cas is, and b. it's simple logic. Why should having a name for things make them any different than they have been?

Still and all—even though this realization doesn't necessarily mean anything, even though assigning a _name_ to the whole… whatever it is that Dean and Cas and Meg have been doesn't necessarily have any other significance than that, any significance beyond the assigning of a name and having a convenient shorthand with which to refer to it—this feels… somehow quite monumental. Rather like the hazing's been eclipsed by this realization that Cas is going out with Dean and Meg, who are also going out with each other.

And of course, because social nuances are not and have never been his forte, Cas is probably the last to know that he, Dean, and Meg are apparently going out. They've probably been assuming that this is the case and telling people about it for months now, which would explain why and how Yuri, Rachel, and Viktor got confused and made their ridiculous bet in the first place. It would also explain why Becky Rosen would not shut up about the three of them in her little gossip column. It would explain _so many_ things—and Cas is just figuring all of this out now, as a consequence of being tied up to a goalpost, because he can't read social cues to save his life (and occasionally chooses to ignore the ones he _can_ make out because they're completely inane and just muddy things up).

It's gotten dark by the time that someone comes and finds him and Yuri. It's gotten dark, and Cas's legs ache, and on top of that, he's gotten hungry—but on the bright side of things, Dean listened to Meg and smuggled one of his father's Swiss Army knives out of the house, just in case. It more than makes itself useful, in cutting up the ropes, and thankfully, no one notices the way that Cas can't stop himself from blushing at the sight of his best friends.

No—at the sight of his boyfriend and his girlfriend. It might take him some time to get used to thinking of them as such, but at least one good thing came out of this hazing ritual.


	8. What Happens In Lock-Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "imprisonment."

"Meg. Meg. Meg. _Meg_. Oh my god, Meg—this is so goddamn boring, I might _literally_ die."

Trying to ignore the way that Dean groans, Meg keeps drumming her fingernails on the desk she's currently stuck at. She glances around the otherwise-empty classroom, rolling her eyes at all of Ms. Rourke's motivational posters with all the pictures of cute kittens on them—maybe that kind of shit flew when she still taught kindergarten, but now that she's gone and gotten her second Master's degree and moved up to teaching high school English? Maybe it's just Meg, but she thinks the cute kitten pictures with the cheery sayings about not giving up are more than a little bit condescending.

Just like how it's kind of condescending that Ms. Rourke told Dean and Meg to behave themselves before she wandered out into the hallway for a little teachers' tete-a-tete with Mrs. Stark. As though Dean and Meg could really get up to any kinds of shenanigans when they're stuck in detention. Maybe if they had three other kids with them—Meg's thinking Cas and Yuri and Amanda Heckerling—and they all started talking about their feelings and realized that they're more than their respective social stereotypes, and then they could dance around to eighties music and it'd be a real party. Like, it'd be a fucking blast—it'd make Lila Beth Fremont's birthday party look positively boring by comparison.

But with only Dean and Meg in here? _The Breakfast Club_ is looking more like _the club where Dean and Meg just mutually annoy each other until it's five o'clock and they can go the fuck home_.

Besides, Dean might have some anaphylactic asthma attack thing if someone sat him down and made him talk about his feelings.

And never even mind that, he doesn't have hair that long enough for him to be Judd Nelson, but he really can't be Emilio Estevez (because he can't wrestle anybody anymore without wheezing like he needs his inhaler) and he just definitely can't be Anthony Michael Hall (because Cas beat him at Star Trek trivia last weekend—on a technicality, granted—and that makes Cas king of the nerds). So it's probably for the best that it's just the two of them in here right now, because any other kids and Meg's little movie fantasy would just be all kinds of wrong. Anyway, there's no one around to be a teacher's pet and start telling them to shut up because they're in detention to be _punished_ , not to talk to each other about anything or everything or whatever the Hell comes up.

" _Meg_ ," Dean whines, leaning his chair onto its back legs, even though he could fall over and split his head open and get blood and brain-gunk all over the carpet or some kind of shit like that. " _Meeeeg_. I'm _so. bored_. Detention is _so. boring_."

"Well, maybe you should've thought of that _before_ you told Garth that his parents sent him to live with his uncle because they hate him and then made him _cry_ ," Meg points out, and quite sensibly, she thinks. "And, furthermore? Maybe you _really_ should've thought of that before doing it right in front of Vice-Principal Tapping. Just a thought, Pumpkin."

"Yeah, because I could totally tell that Vice-Principal Bitch-Face was lurking around the corner, just waiting for me to fuck up," Dean says and slumps forward, bringing his chair back down and flopping onto his desk. For a moment, all he does is beat his forehead into his folded-up arms, and Meg's about to ask if that's really making him feel better when he pipes up again, "And anyway, Garth called me, 'Chubby Hubby.' Like I'm some fucking ice cream cone. A _fat-ass_ ice cream cone."

Meg rolls her eyes—usually, it gives her some serious satisfaction, rolling her eyes at Dean, but at the moment? All the really wants to do—all she's not going to do because it would just get her in even more trouble—is punch him in the mouth. "But you _are_ chubby," she says, and really, this whole voice of reason shtick that she's picking up is not cutting it for her. "Maybe instead of making people cry because you're chubby and they make fun of you? You could try, like, _accepting_ the fact that you're kind of plus-sized? Or at least you could try finding better insults than, 'I might be fat, but at least I don't look like a naked mole-rat.'"

"But Garth _does_ look like a naked mole-rat. He looks like a naked mole-rat that's trying to grow one of those creepy seventies porn mustaches. Only he can't really grow facial hair yet, so he just looks like a baby child molester."

"Oh my _god_ , that's not even remotely the point." If Meg gets a headache from this and can't focus on their biology project, she's going to kick Dean in the balls. "The point is, Tubby, that you can't just act out all the time because you hate yourself or you're angry or whatever the fuck is going on with you today. That's what my therapist told me when he decided that I have _issues_ because my Mom left. Why not try being happy and spiting the fuck out of everyone who wants you to be miserable because you're not some stupid stick-figure or some 'roided up jock? If you hate them so much, make them get depressed because you're fat and you're out there, having a more awesome life than they are."

Dean thinks about this for a moment. He even makes the ducky-lipped pouty face that he always makes when he's thinking extra-hard about something. And finally, he says, "Okay, for one thing: Cas is a jock now, so don't just make fun of jocks out-of-hand like that or you'll hurt his feelings—"

"No, I won't, because Cas doesn't think of himself as a jock so he doesn't _care_ if I make fun of them, but please, do continue being ridiculous at me."

"Okay, so, for the second thing: maybe I can't act out all the time, but in case you haven't noticed, I can't just accept being a big fat-ass, either? Like, I can't do it, Meg—it's just not a thing, and it's never going to happen, and I'm not going to do it, ever, and—"

"And if you talk about the big diet you're on _one more fucking time_ , I'm going to beat you unconscious." Not that she ever actually would beat Dean unconscious—it would take a while, and she'd probably hurt herself, and she'd get in trouble, and Cas would be upset, and it's all just so much more trouble than it's worth—but at the same time… "Seriously, I am so beyond fucking sick of hearing about your diet, Dean. And I'm so beyond fucking sick of you beating yourself up over your weight. Didn't you pay attention to that health class lecture about eating disorders? It's _just a number_."

"Well, it's a number that's getting pretty fucking _high_ , so excuse me for being kind of upset about that."

"And excuse _me_ for being kind of upset that you use that number as an excuse to bully yourself and generally treat yourself like shit."

Not that Meg actually gives a crap about Dean's weight issues or his food issues or the way he beats himself up or all whatever's going on with him. Meg just cares that Dean's been annoying about this whole mess of shit—and it's been going on for _months_ now, and he can't sit down for lunch without complaining because his Mom put mayonnaise on his sandwich or peanut butter on his celery sticks, and maybe he should open his eyes already and see that there's so much more to him than what the fucking scale tells him because the fact that he refuses to do this is really getting on Meg's nerves. And maybe she cares that he makes Cas get upset when he starts talking himself down—but she definitely doesn't care about _Dean_.

She certainly doesn't care in any way that would merit him furrowing his brow and staring at her like she's some fucking puzzle before he sucks it up and says, "And for a third thing? Just. Like you of all people can talk about getting in fights with people and making them cry? I mean, why are you in detention again? Maybe because you kicked Steve in the balls? And maybe because he's still at the ER, getting them pulled back down? And like, you're ridiculously lucky you didn't get _suspended_ , so maybe you shouldn't be lecturing me about nonviolence or anything?"

"That pigskin-throwing son of a bitch groped my ass and acted like I should be fucking grateful for it," Meg huffs and folds her arms over her chest. "As far as I'm concerned, he kicked himself in the balls. Because he deserved it that much."

Dean winces in what must be sympathetic pain, and he opens his mouth to say something else—but since Ms. Rourke doesn't seem like she's coming back any time soon, Meg shuts him up by climbing into his lap, snaking her arms around his shoulders. She'd never admit it out loud, but she likes Dean's lap better than Cas's, any day of the week—sure, Cas's legs are less like sticks since he picked up jogging and JV soccer, but Dean's lap is soft and so much nicer for sitting on. And it's especially nicer for sitting on, considering what Meg has in mind.

"Here's how this is gonna go," she tells him as gently as she can manage. "We've got half-an-hour left of being stuck in here. Either we can stop talking and sit here quietly, or we can make out—standard rules apply and it doesn't mean anything, but we'll make out. And then we'll make out with Cas later so fair is fair. It's your call, though, so… what's it gonna be, Dean-o?"

Dean doesn't think about his answer. He doesn't say anything, either. He just cups Meg's jaw with one hand, puts the other down on her hip, and nudges her into a kiss that's almost—but not quite—too gentle.


	9. Nailed Me To The Cross

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "crucifixion."

Sighing from the pit of his chest, Cas thumps his fork against his plate of half-eaten waffles. "Well, I'm sorry," he says, "but I just don't see the value of Andrew Lloyd Webber's _work_ , Dean."

"Cas, quit being so feisty about it," Meg huffs, stirring her straw through her strawberry milkshake and shaking her head for reasons Cas can't quite fathom. "It was a college production of _Jesus Christ Superstar_ , not… some fucking Shakespeare play, performed at the Globe with Sir Patrick Stewart."

It's the middle of April, probably getting close to curfew for everyone, it's raining, and they're sitting around a table at the Roadhouse, debating musical theatre. Cas almost can't believe that this is his life—not just that he's here with his boyfriend and their girlfriend, that part he's more than gotten used to by now, for all it took him a while—but… Everything's so surreal, with Michael overseas and getting shot at, Luke going to Harvard Law and not talking to anyone, and Gabriel in a psych ward for going on two weeks, now. Anna, Mother, and Father seem to think that Cas should just put everything aside because there's nothing he can do about anything—but as he prods at his waffles, Cas doesn't think he can do that.

The most that he can do is just try to keep up the veneer of normality. Keep arguing with Dean and Meg because that's what's expected of him, in this moment.

"College production or not, there are still certain _standards_ to which theatrical productions should be held, though," Cas tells them both. He hates the hint of a whine that creeps into his voice—and he especially hates it doing so in public, never mind it doing so at the Roadhouse, where people could overhear it—but when Meg is intransigent, he can't entirely help it. Especially when she's being intransigent and Cas is _right_. Dean and Meg are both being stubborn in holding to their mistaken notions about the play—much less why Pastor Jim took them to see it with the youth group—but really, they'll have to give up and see Cas's way about things, sooner or later. He's going to make them see that he's right, even if he has to order a second chocolate milkshake because he finishes this one.

"Forgive me for holding this show to this set of standards. Especially when it's a production dealing with the martyrdom of Jesus Christ. For one thing, Judas Iscariot was played with _entirely_ too much sympathy."

"That's why it's an _interpretation_ of the story and not a literal recreation though, Cas," Dean protests and reaches for another fake-sugar packet to dump into his coffee. Supposedly, he's working on taking his coffee blacker than the pits of Morgoth, the same way that Cas takes his own coffee—but any time Dean orders the stuff, he mixes in all kinds of fake-sugars and half-and-half.

Either way, Cas guesses that he can't really complain about Dean mixing things in his coffee. Dean could really stand to be eating more than french fries, and barely picking at them, besides. They've been sitting in here for forty-five minutes, and his plate is still more than half-full. It makes no sense that he's not eating anything. They skipped dinner tonight to make it to the show with Pastor Jim and everyone else, and there's no way that Dean isn't hungry after only eating his _sandwich_ over lunch. Still, Dean's insisted since they got here that he's not really feeling all that much like food—much less like their traditional after-youth group waffles and milkshakes. Cas blinks down at Dean's plate, then wrinkles his nose at Dean himself—and Dean just shrugs at him as though he has no idea what Cas could possibly object to at the moment.

He cards his hand back through his hair and insists at Cas, "Anyway, Pastor Jim says that Jesus couldn't have died in the first place without Judas betraying him—which means that Judas is kind of important? And maybe not as bad as all the official versions want us to think? And then there's that… Gospel of Judas thing that the History Channel was talking about, isn't there—"

"The Gospel of Judas was excluded from the Biblical canon for a _reason_ , Dean," Cas says, rolling his eyes. More than exceptionally fond of Dean or not, Cas just can't abide by Dean operating with woeful and absurd ideas about the Bible and its stories. "Namely: it was created by a bunch of borderline-heretical lunatics called the Gnostics, who actually thought that God had _forgotten how to be God_ , and that He ever needed mankind's help remembering _how to be God_. Never mind all of the _dissent_ they must have sown among the early Christians. Saint Irenaeus must have had a very good reason for rejecting them—and regardless? It really doesn't make Andrew Lloyd Webber's Judas any more acceptable."

"Well, I thought he, Jesus, and Mary Magdalene were all having a love triangle or something," Meg says and slurps at her milkshake. "Or like, maybe they were having threesomes. They were both totally in love with Jesus, though, and you can't tell me otherwise."

"Of course I can't," Cas huffs. "Not with the way they both sang that, 'I Don't Know How To Love Him' song about Jesus—but what I _can_ do is point out that the crucifixion scene was an absolute _joke_. Even for musical theatre. Why on Earth would everyone be singing while the savior of humanity is being _crucified_?"

"Because, like you kind of said? It's a _musical_ , Clarence—everybody sings about everything, and they all sing basically all the time. Even about Jesus being crucified. That's what, 'musical' means."

"Anyway, where do you get off calling _all_ of the Andrew Lloyd Webber canon pointless just because you didn't like _Superstar_?" Dean says as though he's found the one chink in Cas's armor and is zeroing in on it. "What about _Phantom_ , or _Cats_ , or _Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat_?"

Cas folds his arms over his chest and shakes his head. "Really, Dean? _Cats_ is more pointless than anything else in Lloyd Webber's collection," he says. " _Joseph_ had potential, but the fact is that it completely strips the story of all its theological significance, turning it into some farcical excuse for Donny Osmond—or whoever's playing Joseph at the time—to prance around a stage, nearly naked—"

"Come on, you at least have to admit that, 'Close Every Door' is one of the most moving songs you've ever heard, though."

"No, I _don't_ , Dean. Because it _isn't_. And as for _Phantom of the Opera_ —well, the Phantom is a glorified rapist, the whole thing between him and Christine Daaé reeks of abuse on par with Disney's _Beauty and the Beast_ , and Sarah Brightman is a horrifyingly awful vocalist."

"I keep telling you, you have to listen to the _Canadian_ cast recording—the one with Colm Wilkinson and Rebecca Caine—or at least, listen to the bootleg Meg found with Hugh Panaro as the Phantom before you totally crucify the whole show." Dean sighs as though this conversation actually means something to him—as though it means something more than the three of them debating musical theatre, anyway—and as though there's more than this debate going on here. Whatever subtleties Cas is missing out on here, they must be huge, even if he can't fathom them or guess at what they are or anything. But anyway, he's not insulting _Dean_ ; he's just saying that Andrew Lloyd Webber is a hack.

"If you want to know anything about _good_ musical theatre," Cas says, "then you'll both talk to me about Stephen Sondheim. And if you want to talk to me about accomplished vocalists? Bernadette Peters. Patti Lupone. Not… goddamn Sarah Brightman."

Meg smirks and starts dumping the extra milkshake from the spare cup into her glass. "See, now I just think you're being a contradictory little fuck-head because you _can_ ," she snarks. "I think you're taking something else out on me and Dean by being a contradictory little fuck-head because nobody's telling you not to."

"I'm not _being_ contradictory," Cas snaps, and takes a moment to realize the self-disproving nature of what he's just done. Once he puts it together, though, he shakes his head and spears a bit of waffle on his fork. He drags it through the syrup and the whipped cream and tries to think of a retort—and all he comes up with is a simple idea: he needs to get the attention off of him, preferably before Dean and Meg start asking him what's wrong and making him talk about anything they can think of that he might need to talk about.

"Dean," Cas says cautiously, still staring at his plate, because it might betray his ruse, if he looks up at Dean right now. "Is there any reason why you're not eating anything? And don't try to say that it's because you're not hungry, because that sounds like a lie to me. A highly suspicious lie, too."

Dean shuffles uncomfortably in his seat, and with a sigh, Cas nudges his sneaker into Dean's ankle. He believes that it's called, "playing footsie"—and whatever the moniker is, it gets Dean to quietly admit, "Look, I shouldn't have even gotten the fries, okay? But it's part of the new diet I'm trying out, because I'm getting _fatter_ and it's not stopping, and I have to do _something_ about it before my Dad fucking crucifies me. Like… he's been coming home later and later—and he and Mom have been arguing all the time, about money and me and Sam going to college and everything—and I just want to do one thing to make him happy, like… just one, simple thing, you know? Like, lose the weight so he'll have one less thing to worry about."

Which only partly solves the problem at hand. Sure, it gets Meg to groan (which is her version of perking up), and it gets the attention off of Cas—but it means that he has to come up with something to say to this, and as ever, he has no idea what he could possibly say. Somehow, he thinks Dean would object to the idea of outright rejecting his father, and there are certain other complications with the idea of just killing John Winchester—certain complications that would get Cas and Dean and Meg into a world of hurt, if they got caught, and even if they didn't, Cas probably isn't supposed to fantasize about killing anybody. Especially not his boyfriend's father.

But in lieu of any other ideas, Cas sighs and flags down Ash. He thinks about making Dean eat some damn waffles, but instead puts an order in for one of the salads. It's not as good as waffles, but Dean needs to eat something more substantial than picked-over french fries.


	10. Skin Crawl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "phobias." This chapter is especially TRIGGERING for **eating disorders** and features a scene of self-induced vomiting.

Stumbling into the expansive bathroom, Dean _feels_ all the color draining from his face and his heart plummeting into his stomach. As though his stupid, fat stomach needed anything else inside it—as though it could ever need anything else inside it, _ever_ , especially not the shit that Dean's been eating today—as though Dean needs his heart to be down there on top of all the hot dogs, and the burger, and the brownies.

Especially not on top of the goddamn brownies. He ate, like, three or four of them out there already. Because he's a goddamn _pig_ with no sense of self-control.

As he drags his eyes up and down his reflection, Dean doesn't even know what he's doing here in the first place. Well, him being in the bathroom? That much definitely makes sense—he took his shirt off by the pool, all because Cas decided to prod him into it (stupid Cas with his stupid abs, who can take his stupid shirt off and no one cares because of his _stupid abs_ ), and immediately, Lila Beth Fremont and her friends started pointing and laughing, and miming round, bloated-ass stomachs, and one of them asked Lila Beth when this turned into a _whale_ -watching party—

But being at Lila Beth Fremont's Fourth of July pool party in the first place? That doesn't make any sense at all. It'd make sense for _Meg_ to be here—her Dad and Lila Beth's work together or something, Lila Beth probably has to invite Meg to things—but Dean has no idea how he and Cas scored invites to this party at all.

Well, even Cas might have an explanation for him being here. He and Yuri turned out to be the JV soccer team's new star players back in the fall. Then they took over the JV swim team and the JV track team—Cas brought home more first-place medals than anyone at Lawrence High's managed since, like, the seventies. Even if Cas doesn't think of himself as a jock, the fact remains: everybody else probably does—and that means that Cas gets invited to all the cool parties now. Or anyway, it might mean that. Dean guesses that time will tell on that count. They'll see if Cas gets invited to more stuff, soon.

Dean's skin crawls as he topples forward, propping himself up on the sink—palms flat on the cold marble—staring at his eyes in his reflection—then staring at his stretch-marked belly, bigger than it's ever been and defiantly sagging over the waistband of his swim trunks; at his round, chubby cheeks and his double-chin, which makes more of a spectacle of itself when he goes and swallows thickly; at his soft, fleshy chest, his boobs that are probably the same size as Meg's except that she's actually supposed to have them and Dean isn't—and why even invite him to this party in the first place? He doesn't understand. Just because of Cas and Meg? No, no—that wouldn't make sense, Lila Beth's never been shy about excluding people from stuff.

But inviting him just to laugh at Dean? Would that make any sense instead? Maybe, maybe not—but how could Lila Beth have known that Dean would take his shirt off? How could she have known that Dean would even show up? How could she have _known_ that he tipped the scales at two-sixty-five this morning or that he'll probably need to buy all new clothes soon? Probably even before the back-to-school sales? (In fairness, Dean doesn't know if Lila Beth knows that, but he wouldn't put anything past her, he just wouldn't.)

Dean splutters, heaves a deep breath, almost thinks that maybe he should fumble for his inhaler—except that he's breathing just fine, for the most part. Or anyway, it doesn't hurt to breathe. His lungs aren't constricted. So why do they feel like they're flopping around inside his chest, just itching to get out and spill all over the floor? And why won't his arms stop trembling—it's probably because they're too weak to hold his fat ass up and they're protesting the fact that he's making them support all of his weight. A good portion of it, anyway. His knees are probably wobbling underneath him for the same reason—and they're all probably still out there, laughing at him—Lila Beth and all her friends probably won't _stop_ laughing at him—they're still probably laughing their asses off because Dean's a human blob-monster, because he's too big to be allowed.

And the worst part is, he's trying so goddamn _hard_ —it's not even Dad's disappointment anymore, because Dad's just always disappointed in Dean, no matter what he does to change that—it's just so frustrating, the way that he tries _so hard_. He tried cutting back and cutting stuff out, but he always cheated—he always ate the bad food anyway, despite all of the telling himself that he wasn't supposed to eat it, despite reminding himself of how _bad_ it was and how all it would do for him was make him get fatter, faster.

So he tried not eating anything, but first his head felt fuzzy and spinning and muddled up, and anyway, people noticed it—Meg and Cas and Mom and Sam all noticed it—because a big fat-ass not eating anything was _weird_ —and even worse than that? Sometimes, eating nothing just ended up with Dean gorging himself, eating all the food that he could find, as mindless as an attack dog, only stopping when someone stumbled in and caught him, or when he ran out of food, or when he couldn't eat anymore because he couldn't stop himself from crying anymore.

But he swore to God that he'd never, ever hit two-fifty—no matter what he had to do, he'd never hit the marker of two-hundred and fifty pounds—but he's tried everything that he can think of and he still passed what was supposed to be his hard upper limit, his point of no return. Never mind the fact that _two-hundred_ pounds was supposed to be the point of no return, originally. Never mind the way that he's already worse off than he was ever supposed to let himself get. Never mind any of it—the bottom line is still that he's tried absolutely everything and he's still let himself get so bad that he has no idea how to even begin to fix his so-called weight problem. He's tried _everything_.

Well. Except for one thing that he can think of—except for one thing that comes to him in a flash like lightning—except for one simple thing. There's still this one simple thing that Dean hasn't tried and as he stares at his reflection, just the thought of this _one simple thing_ makes his arms stop shaking. Cas and Meg wouldn't like it—but they don't have to be stuck in this horrible, disgusting body—and they wouldn't have to find out, if Dean played his cards right. As long as he does everything right, no one will _ever_ have to find out…

Before he even knows what's happening, Dean's on his knees before the toilet. He stares at it for a moment—is he really going to do this? Then he remembers how he had to suck in a bit, just to see the read-out on the scale—and next thing he knows, he's gagging himself with his own fingers, jamming them hard against the back of his throat. It's wet, and it's pliant, and it's hot and humid and he makes a strangled sort of noise. It takes a moment, but it works—Dean's gag reflex kicks in and he chokes up a huge rush of bile and acid and partially digested food. His throat burns and his eyes sting as they well up with tears, but he gets it all up—he coughs and he spits and he gets all of it up and into the bowl instead of inside him.

And when the first round's up, he digs his nails back in again, makes himself throw up another time. And when that round's done, he pauses just long enough to heave a deep breath, then another one—then he pokes and prods and rams his fingers down until he makes himself sick another time. Just to be sure that he gets rid of all the food he gorged himself on earlier. Just to be sure that nothing gets left behind. _Just to be sure_.

The smell is terrible—it's absolutely rancid—and the taste that lingers in Dean's mouth kinda makes him want to die. But relief floods over him anyway, all warm and washing up and down his insides in gentle waves. As he flushes away the evidence, Dean can't help making a mental note—he needs to do this way more often. It's perfect: he gets to eat, so no one thinks he's weird or there's anything that's wrong with him, but he doesn't have to deal with the calories. He could get out of letting them wreak all kinds of Hell on his body.

Yes, this isn't good for him. Yes, it technically means that he has a problem—but nothing else Dean's done is working for him, and besides, he's _fat_. Not even just chubby or pleasantly plump, but full on _fat_. He's not some bulimic ballerina who doesn't have any weight to lose, so she can't afford to make herself throw up. Dean has _plenty_ of weight to lose, so the eating disorder rules are probably different for him. The normal ones don't apply. Dean's skin crawls again and his arms get lined with goosebumps—the hairs on the back of his neck prick up—and a warm rush shocks down his spine. Yes, this is definitely a good thing to keep around.

He only doubts his conviction when he wanders out of the bathroom, and he only doubts anything because Cas and Meg are waiting there. Meg's holding Dean's t-shirt and she'd never admit to it—not if she's the Meg that Dean knows and sometimes makes out with—but her brow's knotted up like she's concerned or something. She holds out Dean's shirt for him and he tosses it on, wriggles into the skin-hugging fabric—and he actually thinks that maybe they didn't notice anything, much less the sound of someone retching. She's still dripping all over the nice floor and stinking like chlorine, with her Harry Potter towel wrapped around her shoulders. Maybe they only just got there.

But then Cas has to go and hug himself rather tightly, bristle as he straightens up against the wall, and ask Dean, "Were you throwing up just now?"

Dean sighs. "Yeah—it was just… it was, like, stress or something. Or maybe I ate too much out there, or… just them laughing at me, man. It… nerves. And it made me sick." Even stumbling over his words, Dean's surprised at how easy it is, lying to his best friends—he manages to look them both in the eye and everything.

Meg folds her arms over her chest and slouches into the wall, right next to Cas. For a moment, Dean thinks she's going to call him out on his bullshit, but all she says is, "Do you want to go home? I mean, if you're sick… maybe we should go back to your place and let you lie down or something? No one's making us stay."

Dean swallows thickly and he nods. His skin crawls and his stomach twists around, tying itself up in knots and writhing in the stink of guilt—he's lying to his best friends, and he's a terrible person for it… but they're none the wiser, and as they walk back to Dean's house, he could swear that he feels lighter already.

He's going to beat this problem of his. No matter what it takes, he will.


	11. Hurricanes Are Bad, Though

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "natural disasters."

Meg was pretty sure, at the start of tenth grade, that her messy slate from the past school year would be wiped clean and that she'd have to work pretty hard to earn the suspension that she was ramping up to, but never quite got around to accomplishing as a baby freshman.

Suffice it to say, Vice-Principal Tapping had other ideas about this, which is pretty much entirely why Meg finds herself sitting in the office, alone (for the most part), and waiting for her Dad to come pick her up and take her home.

For a moment, she thinks about taking her phone out—playing Solitaire or doing sudoku puzzles on it, or maybe texting Dean and Cas to let them know what happened after she got dragged down here for getting into it with Steve and Marcus in the middle of the cafeteria (not her brightest move ever)—but the way that Vice-Principal Tapping's secretary keeps narrowing her eyes if Meg so much as shifts on the bench? Suggests that taking out her phone might be a bad idea on par with letting Dean try to run a marathon.

Not that Dean would ever _try_ to run a marathon, but Meg's point stays the same, really. And anyway, with the way he's been lately—with the way he's dragged Meg and Cas out jogging with him every morning, without fail, for at least an hour, no matter how winded he gets or how much he has to rely on his inhaler, ever since Lila Beth's damn fiasco of a so-called pool party? Meg's not entirely sure that she trusts her assessment of _Dean would never try to run in a marathon because he knows better, because he **knows** that it would probably trigger his asthma in some really gross and probably unfortunate ways_.

Meg's not entirely sure that she trusts anything she believes right now—just considering that trusting what she believes is what got her stuck in Tapping's office in the first place.

*******

When Dad finally shows up, he doesn't say anything to Meg at all, simply signs her out on some sheet that the secretary has and motions for her to follow him. Which she does, of course—she follows him closely and quickly, keeping almost in lock-step with him, because Dad not saying anything is usually the first sign that he's pissed off. Dad's a lawyer and he makes his living with words, with rhetoric, with always having something to say about anything—a clever retort, a logical syllogism that no one can refute, a little piece of information that nobody else thought about—so a chill courses up Meg's spine at all this silence that's going on between them. She can feel the goosebumps pricking up along her arms, and Dad hasn't even done anything to make that happen.

He even turns off the radio—which pops onto NPR as soon as he turns on his car—and as long as Meg's known him, her Dad has never turned off the radio for any reason, even during their serious conversations. By all appearances, Meg is totally screwed, this time. She's finally done it. She has finally fucked up so badly that Dad is going to take it out of her ass, the way that Dean's Dad takes every single slip-up, no matter how minuscule, out of Dean's. She's caused a total and complete disaster, this time, and in all likelihood, Dad's never going to let her hear the end of it, ever. He'll probably hold it over her head until she goes to college—and maybe even once she's graduated with a Bachelor's degree in something or other, she'll still be hearing about the time she got herself suspended for fighting and maybe breaking Steve's nose.

Even when all Dad says is, "Princess, do you want to explain to me what happened here, today?"—Meg doesn't trust any of that. She doesn't trust the easy way that Dad's smiling at her—his lips curled into the tiniest little almost-smirk—and she doesn't trust the way that he borderline chirps everything he says. He's too pleasant and he's probably waiting for her to give him the wrong answer, the answer that will really fuck up everything.

But Meg has to tell him something—she can't just _not answer_ a question from her Father—so she sighs and sinks into the passenger seat, running her fingers down her t-shirt as she says, "Steve and Marcus were picking on Dean and Cas, _again_ , so I told them to back off. They didn't, so I punched Steve in the mouth. So, Marcus smacked me and called me a bitch, so I kneed him in the balls. And things kind of spiraled from there, I don't really remember it all that clearly, but by the time Ms. Rourke and Mr. Stark pulled us apart, Steve and Marcus were pretty well regretting their choice to fuck with me and my boys, so… yeah, that happened."

Meg shrugs as she wraps things up, because that really ought to settle the matter. They shouldn't have anything left to talk about, because Meg explained everything and it's over, and it's done, and she doesn't have to say anything else.

Dad doesn't seem to agree with that assessment of the situation they're stuck in, though, just considering the way that he ponders everything, purses his lips and huffs a bit before he says, "Now, Princess, that sounds very admirable—but what aren't you telling me? I think you're neglecting the part where you tell me _exactly_ what Steve and Marcus were doing to Dean and Caspian that incited your wrath. I think that part of the story is rather important, don't you?"

"I don't know, sir—personally, I don't think it's that much of a big deal why I did it? But it rather sounds to me like _you_ think it's kind of important…" Judging from the way he arches his eyebrow, there's basically no way that Meg's going to get out of telling Dad what happened.

So she huffs, and rolls her eyes, and says, "First, Steve started calling Dean all kinds of fat-ass-related nicknames—like, going after him for everything he's sensitive about, and spewing all kinds of shit about how Dean's going to be alone forever because he's _fat_. Then, they started picking on Cas for finally getting an Asperger's diagnosis, which… I don't even know how they _know_ about that, but they were acting like it makes him less than a person—they were calling him a robot and a freak and all kinds of shit like that. And I wasn't going to put up with that, so I kicked their asses."

Dad considers this slant on things for a moment, and then nods. Without a word, he pulls out of the space and pulls out onto the road. He still doesn't turn the radio down as he says, "I think we're going to go get ice cream, Princess." Meg blinks at him and wrinkles her nose, which makes him chuckle under his breath. "My dear, you are a hurricane, and some people don't know how to handle that. Your suspension is a reflection of how the school administration isn't ready to accept the way that you can… be somewhat aggressive in making sure that what's right gets done. And no daughter of mine is going to let such small-minded nonsense stop her from being all that she can be."


	12. Come Down And See Me Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "atonement."

Homecoming's going pretty great—until Dean goes and splits his pants wide open.

In fairness to that initial statement, Meg's not really sure that homecoming—or any school dance, period—can really be classified as, "going great," regardless of how well or not things are actually going, just on the grounds that they are all spending a Saturday night in the gym, surrounded by balloons and streamers and teachers playing watchdog and a DJ playing all the music that Meg pretends she doesn't like for everyone but Dean and Cas.

(It's nothing that she really has to do—she could let other people know that she knows all the words to "Love Story" and "I Kissed A Girl" if she wanted to—but she doesn't, because then, people might know that she doesn't exclusively listen to rock music best played at volume, "eardrum-splittingly loud.")

There's been some dancing, there's been some making out with her boys in the corners—coupled with some letting them make out with each other—and there's been some laughing at the other people while they screw around and trip over their too-long dresses or their heel shoes or their ill-fitting suits—but it's not exactly a party Meg would write home about. Or particularly care to repeat, unless Dean and Cas want to go to homecoming next year—and if they actually want to, Meg might consider thrashing both of them to within an inch of their lives.

Not that she would actually hurt them or anything, but she'd make them regret wanting to drag her out to a school dance just because Cas is expected to show up, as one of the soccer team's stars, and just because Dean wants to feel normal for the night.

(Why he wants to feel normal—especially normal by their classmates' fucked up standards—is just beyond Meg. Sure, she gets it—other kids in their class give him shit because he's fat, and they give him shit because he likes Star Trek, and they give him shit for all kinds of other reasons—but that just seems like all the indication Dean should need that he really, really doesn't even _want_ to fit in with those people. Besides, he's so much better when he's being weird.)

No one's even spiked the punch at this shindig, so Meg can't watch drunk assholes make spectacles of themselves for her amusement. Or, well, she guesses that they wouldn't be doing anything for _her _amusement, specifically, but she'd still get to kick back and watch them fuck up in hilariously awful ways, and that would be worth it.__

__Just like how it's pretty worth it when Dean splits his pants. He doesn't mean for it to happen—obviously, no one in their right mind would _intentionally_ split their pants, what kind of asinine move would that be—but it happens in a flash, while he's wandering back from getting punch for Cas and Meg. Someone's black satin scarf slipped off the back of their chair and onto the floor. Meg spots the shine of it, sticking out clearly against the mottled white linoleum of the gym—Dean doesn't see it, though, so he steps right on the scarf and it slips around underneath his foot, which slides away from him._ _

__He flails. The drinks go flying, spilling out all over the floor, and one of the empty cups lands right on Lila Beth Fremont's expensive hairdo. Dean's one foot—the one on the scarf—slips so far that he's basically in a split (as close as he could get to the splits, anyway), and while he's trying to recover and stand back up, he topples over like a stack of Jenga blocks. His pants split while he's trying to get himself up off the floor. One second, he's kneeling and trying to clamber up—the next, though? A loud _rrrrip_ cuts through the gym—right as the DJ's changing songs, too, so there's no way that anyone could have missed it—and once he's standing up, Dean fumbles around, grabbing at his back._ _

__When he turns around, Meg sees the wide hole and the flash of white boxer-briefs where his back-seam used to be. Even under the dim lighting, she can see his cheeks flushing scarlet as the jeers from Lila Beth and the other popular girls start up—all, _look at that, Fatty's too fat for his pants_ and, _ew, Dean, put that away, no one wants to look at your fat ass in this capacity_. And while Cas just sits there—probably too confused and stunned to do much more than stare—Meg rolls her eyes and strides over to Dean. She's not going to start a fight with anyone—because frankly, after her suspension, it's probably a miracle she was allowed to come at all—but she can at least do something._ _

__With a huff, she shucks off her cardigan and ties it around Dean's waist, the way she would if she'd just gotten her period all over her jeans. Tugging him by the wrist, she says, "Come on, Tubby. This party's a real snooze-fest, anyway. Let's go find Anna and go home."_ _

__Dean doesn't say anything in return. In fact, he doesn't say anything for the rest of the night—not when they find Anna and Meg explains the situation and asks if they can leave, not while she's driving them to their respective houses, and not even when he gets out and wanders up the walkway to his house, and Meg calls after him that she'll want her cardigan back later. It's slightly worrisome, the way that he doesn't say anything, but Meg chalks it up to the embarrassment of the situation and slumps into Anna's backseat with her conscience clear. Everything's going to be all better on Monday morning, she's sure of it._ _

____

*******

But things aren't all better on Monday morning. First, Dean doesn't text Meg back all day on Sunday, and then when Anna picks them up for school, he doesn't hardly acknowledge her at all. Just a nod and a huff, and none of their playful banter when Meg complains about how hard their workbook pages were for Chemistry. Cas sits sandwiched between her and Dean in Anna's backseat because Becky Rosen needs a ride this week and Anna gave her shotgun privileges because her Dad is really sick or something. And judging from Cas's face, he'd rather be just about anywhere else right now—which makes no sense because everything should be fine by now, right?

By lunch, things are still mysteriously screwed up between Meg and Dean, and she still has no idea why. She could accept Dean not answering her texts while they're in class, but giving her the cold shoulder over lunch? Being perfectly silent while she and Cas gab about stuff and things, and only shrugging limply when Meg tries to prod him for an opinion about whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Stark are gonna get divorced? That's not gonna fly with Meg. She and Dean give each other crap all the time, that's part of the charm of their friendship, so where's the fun in one-sided conversations? Where's the fun in anything if Dean refuses to talk back? How can Meg enjoy bantering with Dean if Dean's not gonna banter back?

(And the worst part is: she hasn't even given him that much crap today. Maybe, possibly, if she'd given him crap, she could understand why he's shutting her down left and right—but all she's done is ask if the tiny, wilted salad that he brought for lunch is really enough for him to call sufficient in any kind of good conscience.)

And unfortunately for Meg—unfortunately for her desire to figure out what's going on with Dean without any interference—people notice. Which she could've gone without knowing, but Becky Rosen comes and finds her in the library during their free period. Meg's trying to finish up some worksheets for Geometry, but Becky Rosen invites herself to sit down at Meg's table. She doesn't go away when Meg pointedly arches an eyebrow at her, either—which poses its own particular set of problems, because what's Meg going to do with herself if people stop fearing her? She has no idea, but it'll probably be some kind of unpleasant.

"So, what's going on with you and Dean lately?" Becky says after a moment of truly eardrum-grating silence and staring at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move. Meg's almost grateful for Becky taking the initiative to speak, just because she hates the silence so fucking much. "I mean, like… did you and Dean break up or something? Is that why he was making out with Cas at homecoming? But then, if that's why he was making out with Cas at homecoming… then why were _you_ making out with Cas at homecoming?"

"What the fuck do _you_ care if Dean and I broke up or not?" Meg snaps—and then catches herself and shakes her head. "I mean, we were never going out in the first place, so we couldn't exactly break up or anything? And as for Cas, it's not that complicated. We all make out with each other, all the time, and it doesn't mean anything. It definitely doesn't mean that anyone broke up with anyone else or anything like that or whatever you're thinking. And I still don't get exactly why you _care_ , or why it's any of your fucking business?"

Becky shrugs. "Everybody's talking about it," she says as though this explains everything. "Viktor says that Dean's mad at you for something but he won't say what—Dean won't say what, I mean. All Viktor said was that he doesn't know what Dean is mad about. And Chuck says that it's probably because you talked smack about _Doctor Sexy_ again, because everybody knows how much Dean loves _Doctor Sexy_. And _Rachel_ says that Cas is stuck in the middle and can't pick between you two because you're both his best friends and that making him choose isn't very fair of either of you."

"That still doesn't make it any of _your_ business, Becky," Meg points out. "Or any of anybody else's business. Even if everybody's talking about it, that doesn't mean that they should. And I swear to God, if you write this up on your little gossip blog, I _will_ go tattle on you to Tapping."

All Becky does in response to this is smirk like Meg has no idea what she's talking about. She smirks like Meg is some five-year-old and she's the fat cat in a canary cage. "Blind items are an established journalistic tradition, Meg," she says, cool as a snowstorm. "All I'm doing is getting potential career research. Besides, if Tapping and the school shut down my blog, I'll just make up a new one and be sneakier about it."

"You couldn't be subtle if you tried, Sweetheart. Stick to writing your gay fanfiction about Doctor Sexy and Nurse Charming," Meg huffs. "And they're not really blind items if everybody and their dog knows what you're talking about. They're more like you being annoying as fuck-all and pitting everyone in the school against each other just because you _can_."

Becky shrugs again, and really, her nonchalance is getting on Meg's nerves. She almost wants to ask if Becky even paid attention to the lesson at the end of _Mean Girls_ —but knowing Becky, she was probably too busy fantasizing about Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams making out. (Which isn't exactly a bad mental image, now that Meg thinks about it, but is so entirely not the point and certainly doesn't justify Becky's one-girl crusade to fucking ruin everything with gossip.)

And Meg glaring at her doesn't stop Becky from saying, "Well, anyway, it doesn't really matter what you think of me or my blog—because Dean's still mad at you, and if you had any idea what to do about it, you wouldn't be picking on me. Toodles."

With which, Becky flounces off as though the conversation never happened. If not for the fact that they're in the library and Meg respects the sanctity of libraries, she'd drag Becky down by her long, half-blonde hair and kick her ass right here.

*******

There's still half-an-hour left in free period, though, so Meg packs up her notebook and her textbooks, dumps them all into her backpack and moves over to Cas's table. He's sitting alone today, because Dean has his English elective—Ms. Rourke's class on science-fiction as literature—and when Meg joins him, Cas barely even nods by way of acknowledging her. Which, for all it's slightly unnerving, is probably just because he's immersed in a paperback, at the moment—well, he won't be for long, if Meg has her way. There's a time for letting Cas read and there's a time for action, and right now? Meg's pretty sure that right now is a time for action.

So she reaches over and she snatches Cas's book away, earning a disgruntled huff with a slight whine thrown in. _The Scarlet Letter_ —so he was lying, and he didn't early finish their American Lit reading like he said he did. Or else he's trying to get ahead of the lass. No matter—Meg still demands of him, "Why is Dean mad at me?"

Glancing around their surroundings, Cas furrows his brow like she's started speaking German at him. "I'm sorry," he says, and pretty earnestly at that, "but do I look like Dean?"

"No, but he won't talk to me for some reason. But he talks to _you_ —or at least, you haven't complained about him not talking to you all of a sudden. So tell me why he's mad at me and what I can do to fix it. …Like, _now_ , Cas."

"You realize that I could actually talk to my therapist about this and get her to write a doctor's note that exempts me from answering your questions about social nuances on the grounds that I don't really understand them very well, right?" Cas sighs and gives Meg a _Look_ like he's seriously exhausted, all half-glassed eyes and lips pressed together in a thin line. He gives her a _Look_ that just screams, _Meg, I am exceedingly fond of you, but I still haven't fully recovered from all the social stimulation of Saturday night, not to mention the fact that Gabriel might be having another manic episode and I'm concerned about him but powerless to help_.

Which should probably deter Meg from her course, even just a little bit—but Meg needs to get her own shit sorted out, and Cas is the only one who can help her. Rolling her eyes, she says, "Yeah, yeah, Captain Autism Spectrum, you have some neuropsychological thing going on with you and social stuff is hard. But let me counter with this: you're a guy. Dean's a guy. I? Am not a guy. Now… go on. Work your devil guy magic and tell me what crawled up Dean's ass and died this weekend and why he's fucking _mad at me_."

As though it might make Cas hurry up and tell her what she wants to know, Meg waves her hands at him, flicking her wrists and pointedly arching her eyebrows.

All Cas does is sigh and roll his eyes right back at her. She probably deserves that. "Yes, because the simple accident of my gender—well, _our_ gender, technically, since Dean is also, as you said, a guy—that completely and utterly random happenstance means that I have any kind of privileged access to Dean's thoughts and feelings. Indeed, I am a mind reader and an empath and I never, ever get confused by his emotionally charged reactions to things. Your assertion makes perfect sense—and in case I'm not inflecting enough? Yes. I am being incredibly sarcastic at you right now."

"He _talks to you_ , asshole. He talks to _you_ , but he hasn't returned my texts or said a word to me since Saturday night. And I wanna know _why_."

"Meg, think about what happened at homecoming for a moment, won't you?" Cas pauses, giving Meg his _Look_ again and when she doesn't put two and two together on her own, he sighs. "Meg, you called Dean by a weight-related nickname—a fairly _negative_ weight-related nickname, one that implies that he's overweight and perhaps unappealing because of it—and you did this right after he split his pants open in front of _everyone at the dance_. You _know_ that he's more than a little bit sensitive about his weight. You _know_ that he beats himself up over it and that his father does even worse. You _know_ that he considered going to fat camp last summer. And you really can't see why he's…"

Cas sighs again, half-groans even, and rubs at the bridge of his nose. "I mean, it's not that _difficult_ to reach a logical conclusion in this situation, is it? I believe he's upset because you hurt his feelings."

"Well, excuse me, First Officer Spock, but I call Dean, 'Tubby' like… literally all the time. And it's never hurt his feelings _before_ —or at least, it's never hurt his feelings like _this_." Seriously, it's like their thing, insulting each other. It's how they express their love. Or their friendship. Or whatever it is that they have between them. Meg calls Dean _Tubby_ and he calls her _Bitch_ and they both call each other _assholes_ like it's going out of style. "Why's he getting his nuts all twisted up over us insulting each other _now_?"

"I don't _know_ , maybe it's because he _split his pants wide open_ right before you called him that—he was quite publicly humiliated and you _made it worse_. What is so hard for you to understand about this _concept_?" Flexing his fingers, Cas radiates frustration from every inch of him, and for a moment, Meg actually thinks that he might punch her. He makes a fist, at least, even though all he does with it is dig his nails into his own palm. "If you actually want my advice? If you're not just trying to use me to get validation for what you did or something like that? I think you need to stop being stubborn for once and _apologize_ to Dean before the situation blows up into something completely untenable."

Meg probably shouldn't snicker, and she probably shouldn't toe at Cas's ankle, and she probably definitely shouldn't find the expression that he's making super cute—but since when has she ever done what she _should_? "I happen to know for a fact that you find my stubbornness endearing," she points out, smirking when she most certainly shouldn't. "You think it's one of my better qualities, most of the time."

Which at least gets Cas to smile at her for the first time since she's sat down. "Most of the time, yes. When you're not being willfully obtuse and making both of our lives exceedingly difficult, yes, I find your stubbornness quite charming," he says, reaching over to squeeze her wrist. "Now, please apologize to Dean expediently. I'm not especially fond of my two favorite people fighting with each other."

"Yeah, sure, Pretty Boy," she tells him. "I'll get right on the apology train." And she will, too—but there are just a few things she needs to handle first. It's not often that Meg Masters apologizes to anyone, about anything—and that's not even admitting how much Dean means to her. She has to make sure that she does this right.

*******

Fortunately for Meg and for the quest she's apparently on now, everyone but her is busy after school. Cas has soccer practice (which sounds like so much fun—getting all sweaty and worked up with Yuri and their pack of miscreants), Dean has a doctor visit to be present for (which, again, sounds like so much fun—getting poked and prodded and asked invasive questions about his asthma or whatever), and Ruby, Anna, and Becky all have a Girl Scouts troop meeting (which sounds like the most fun that anyone could possibly have ever—planning campouts and jamborees and cookie sales, even though those won't happen for a few months yet).

(Ruby's a mint green vest-wearing Junior scout as of her bridge-up ceremony last May, and as two of the Senior scouts, Anna and Becky seem to help their troop leaders run things, and all her sarcasm aside, Meg would definitely be with them… except for the incident wherein she started a small grease fire during some cooking lesson she'd mostly tuned out and almost tried to put it out with water.

…And the incident where she got in trouble for bringing a Swiss Army knife on a camping trip and trying to justify it with, "What if we run into bears."

…And the incident where she was supposed to be selling cookies down at Kroger and quote-unquote "harassed" people who wouldn't buy a box from her, and may or may not have so-called "bullied" Dean and Cas into buying six boxes each, even though they had plenty of cookies at home.

…Now that she thinks about it? There are a lot of reasons why Meg isn't a Girl Scout anymore. Like, those three incidents are probably just the tip of the iceberg.)

But Girl Scout or not, Meg has an apology to cook up—and pretty literally, at that. So, once she's dumped her backpack and her books at home, she rides her bike over to Kroger and spends some of her saved up allowance money on ingredients. Somehow—she really isn't sure how—she manages to make it back home without breaking any of the eggs. For all she's kind of inept in the kitchen, following the box mix's directions proves to be easier than she expected—the hardest part comes once the stuff is actually done baking, when she has to wait for her concoction to cool off so she can cut the brownies and put all of them on a plate. She wraps the plate up in tinfoil and before she walks the few blocks to Dean's house, she pins a note to the fridge for Dad.

_Gone to settle something with Dean. Should probably be back by dinner. If you and Ruby get take out, I just want the usual, please and thank you. Love, Meg._

When she gets to the Winchesters', Dean isn't home from his doctor visit yet. His Mom answers the door and legs Meg into the living room to wait for him. She kills the time by letting Sam fill her in on the so-called plot of some animated thing he's watching and refusing to tell him what's on the plate, which she sets on the coffee-table. Luckily, she doesn't have to put up with Sam's asinine cartoons for that long, and further luckily, Sam clears out right away when Dean asks him to get lost. Meg luck seems to pretty well run out, though, when Dean slumps into the armchair sitting opposite the sofa and tries to glare at Meg.

 _Tries to_ really being the operative phrase there, since frankly, he looks like a disgruntled kitten, all frumple-faced and frowning, wrinkling up his nose like he just sniffed something nasty—and wow, Meg might have seriously underestimated just how much her offhand comment meant to Dean. Like, _seriously_ underestimated it. It really wasn't supposed to be such a big deal—it wasn't supposed to be _any_ kind of deal, period—but for a moment, Meg can't stand to look Dean in the eye. He just looks too miserable, and it makes her chest hurt in that way it sometimes does when she feels guilty. She has to force herself to turn her eyes up from the carpet, and when she does, he's still looking as unimpressed as ever.

"What do you want, Meg?" he says, voice quiet and playing at calm. Playing pretty well at it, too. If she didn't know Dean as well as she does, Meg would be pretty convinced—but there's a little bit of a quiver in his voice, to his lower lip. And those things betray him. Betray the fact that Dean could be doing a whole lot better than he is right now.

"Well, I wanted to—and it's okay if you don't really believe me, because honestly, I can't hardly even believe I'm here doing this in the first place—but I just wanted to apologize?" Meg pauses and takes a deep breath, looks down at her knees, because they're not making a sad kitten face at her or making this whole process ten times harder than it has to be. Babbling at Dean isn't going to help anybody out with anything. It'll probably just end up with Meg saying something she regrets. Which would really just exacerbate this whole sick situation.

Still, she goes on, "I thought about it—about homecoming and the dance and about what I said to you, I mean—and I realized that I probably… y'know, hurt your feelings? When that wasn't my intention at all?"

"Well, what _was_ your intention, then? I mean, all the times you've ever picked on my weight—why would you even _do that_ if it's not to hurt my feelings?" When she looks up at him again, Dean's added some anger to his hurt kitten face—his eyes smolder at her, and he's got his jaw clenched shut—and it actually sends a chill down her spine, makes her swallow thickly and wonder if this whole apologizing thing is just completely pointless after all.

Like, at the very least? If the only point to this is making her feel like shit over accidentally stomping on Dean's feelings, well, then _Meg_ thinks that sounds close enough to "completely pointless" for government work.

But she guesses that she has to say something—since she's still here, and still trying to make nice with someone who's supposed to be one of her friends, she should probably say _something_ —so she goes with, "I just… I never really thought about it as picking on your weight? I mean, okay, it's technically picking on your weight, sure—I'll give you that—like, it relies on weight-related nicknames and all… But I didn't think of it as _picking on anything_? Like. I can see why you'd see it that way, though? But… I just thought of it as kind of playful teasing?"

"What the Hell is so _playful_ about kicking me in the balls about the fact that I'm a big fat-ass, Meg?" And for all he's keeping his voice down—Meg doesn't blame him for that; he probably doesn't want his Mom or Sam to hear them—Dean manages to look completely scandalized at this suggestion. "Like, I get it, okay? I do. You're hard, and you're a bitch to people—and I don't actually mean that in a bad way right now—and you don't take crap from anybody, but… What wires are so _crossed_ for you that you'd think I would actually _like_ you constantly reminding me that I'm _tubby_ —like I could even fucking _forget_ something as obvious as that?"

"Well, you call me a bitch all the time and I'm supposed to take that as a _compliment_? Where the Hell do _you_ get off with that?" Meg snaps more than she means to—especially since she's supposed to be contrite right now—but there's no way that she can just let Dean have this one without putting up a fight. Sometimes, she even does take being called a bitch as a compliment—like, it's one of the highest honors she can get from Steve and Marcus—but with Dean? Not so much. Especially not when he seems to think he's going to get away with making her change her tune without expecting any kind of resistance, much less actually getting it.

"I thought it was just our _thing_ , Dean," she tells him with a sigh. "Like, I thought it was our thing that says, _you're special to me_ —like, you and me and Cas have Star Trek as a thing. And you and Cas have reorganizing your bookshelves as a thing. And me and Cas have French class as a thing. And you and me? I thought our thing was being kinda mean to each other. So… when I called you _tubby_ , it wasn't like I was really saying, _hey, fat-ass, you suck_. It was like I was saying, _hey, fat-ass, we're so comfortable with each other that I can call you names and you get that I mean, 'you're awesome.'_ "

Dean rolls his eyes, jutting his lower lip out a bit, but at least he thinks about this for a moment before he says, "Well, then… maybe we need a new thing? Especially since you call _everybody_ insulting names—pretty much everybody but _Cas_ , anyway—"

"Well, I don't know. Maybe you mean it nicely when you call him _Pretty Boy_ , but in the house I grew up in? Being called a pretty boy was so not a compliment—it usually meant that a guy was kind of useless, aside from his looks… even if Cas _is_ a really pretty boy."

"And that's _so_ not the point," Dean huffs and cards his fingers back through his hair. "But, like. Can our _thing_ maybe not involve you picking on my _weight_ all the time? Like, if I'm supposed to be so important to you and shit, can you _maybe_ do this one thing for me? Like, call me stupid, call me an asshole, call me incompetent and bumbling and a shit older brother—just… call me _anything_ but fat, okay?"

Meg sighs, and maybe it's too early in the conversation for this—maybe she hasn't apologized enough to earn it yet—but she slithers up off the sofa and down into Dean's lap, wraps her arms around his shoulders. She nudges close enough to him that his pudgy stomach bumps up against her own—and he doesn't shove her off, at least. On the contrary, he puts his hands on her hips like this is happening on any other day, and he makes a sighing, appreciative noise when she kisses him, cups his jaw in her hand and sucks on his lower lip. She holds on to the kiss for as long as she can, until Dean whines and pulls back, breathing heavily, which is some indication that her holding on to the kiss was aggravating his asthma, even just a little.

"So, does that mean you'll find some other insults to use for me?" Dean says, and when Meg nods, he reaches down to palm her ass through her jeans. It's nothing they haven't done before, and attempting to encourage him, she grinds down against his lap. "Okay, good—and like, can I ask what's on the plate, now? Or do we still have to talk about feelings and shit?"

"Oh, I think we've done enough of that for the next month, month-and-a-half, Dean-o. There's just one more thing to clear up really quick." Nudging her forehead into his, she snakes one hand off of his shoulder and drops it to touch his belly—he sucks it in like he's trying to get away from her hand, but she follows him, resting her palm over the curve of it and gently pressing her fingertips into his soft paunch. He whines, just enough to indicate that he's kind of uncomfortable with this.

"And just for the record—before I tell you anything about what's on the plate—I just want you to know… And I'm sorry, because this involves feelings and shit, but… I really, really, really _never_ meant to make you feel like shit about all this." In case her point and her refereant aren't glaringly obvious, Meg jostles his belly; it trembles, and Dean whines again. He curls his hand around her wrist, and she expects him to yank her hand away, but he just leaves it there and pouts at her. She goes on, "I'm serious, Dean. I know you're sensitive about it and all, but… I never wanted to make you feel like shit about it. For one thing, that's just a dick move in general—you're fat, sure, but you're still a _person_. But for another thing…"

She kisses him again, then whispers against his mouth, "I think your belly is really cute, okay? And your legs make nice pillows. And you're a better cuddler than Cas is. Don't tell him I said any of this, though, or I'll _hurt_ you."

"God, you're such a freak. Not that I can _talk_ , but," Dean sighs, rolling his eyes and shaking his head, which, all things considered, Meg probably deserves. "But why would I tell Cas about that? Between the two of us, I think the last thing we really need is for Cas to decide that we're too weird for him now. Not that he ever _would_ , but… You never know. Being a popular jock does things to people."

"I don't think I'd really call Cas _popular_. It's more like… people tolerate him because he's a pretty amazing athlete now, and he tolerates them because he doesn't want to make things harder for them as a team." Meg shrugs. It's all a big ball of semantics, really, and entirely not the point. "So… are we done with giving you a body image pep-talk about how cute you are?"

Dean huffs and nudges his forehead back into hers, squeezes her wrist. "You're sort of… You're kind of getting what's going on here, but you're not _really_ getting it?" he says, and steals a kiss of his own, because that totally makes his point more intelligible. "It's not about whether I'm cute or not. It's about how my fat is the first thing that people see about me, you know? It's about how all I ever am to some people—all I ever am to my Dad, for one—is _fat_."

Dean pauses for a moment and lets go of Meg's wrist, cards his fingers through her hair instead. "I mean, I've lost thirty-five pounds since July—which is huge for me, and even my doctor said so, and he's always on my ass about how fat it is? And those pants only split because they didn't fit me right and I was in a weird position… but the only thing that matters to pretty much everybody is that I'm _fat_. Ha ha, Winchester busted his pants because he's too fucking big for them. And I just thought… you and Cas are supposed to be _different_ from everybody else, you know? You're supposed to get that I'm _not_ just some lard-ass."

"Yeah, I know. It's sort of like how I thought you and Cas were supposed to get that I'm not just some heinous bitch who hates everybody." She noses at his cheek for a moment, not that she'd ever admit to doing so outside of this room. "But since we're both agreed that we're more than our respective appearances… There's brownies on the plate. And before you go whining about how you can't eat them because of your diet or whatever? They're sugar free and, like, ridiculously low-calorie, for brownies, and you don't have to eat _all_ of them or anything, but…"

She pauses, kisses at the corner of his mouth. "I did kind of make them for _you_ , so don't share them with just anybody, okay. Like, share them with Sam and your Mom and no one else."

Dean promises that he won't share the brownies with the riffraff, which is all the go-ahead Meg needs to start kissing him again, and they'd probably be pretty cool, just keeping up with that—except for the door creaking open and the sound of someone loudly clearing their throat. Flushing hot and scarlet, Meg jerks back from Dean, and he yanks as far away from her as he can, considering the back of the chair. She whips her head around, and finds herself face-to-face with Dean's Dad, with tall, burly, salt-and-pepper-haired John Winchester. He stands there in the doorway for a moment, just arching his eyebrow at them, and once Meg is convinced that this cannot possibly get worse, he has to go and say:

"Well, dammit, Dean—good job on this one. Here I was, worried and half-convinced you'd end up dating Cas, and you're actually going out with Meg? Well… good job." He says this as though dating Cas would be a bad thing—possibly the worst thing that Dean could do. And judging by the way Dean's eyes nearly bug out of his skull, he doesn't hear the words _good job_ from his Dad nearly often enough. Mr. Winchester huffs, and says to Meg, "So, you staying for dinner, then?"

"Actually, uhm. I was just… I was just going to be leaving soon, sir? I promised my Dad that I'd be home for dinner." Well, she did say that she'd _probably_ be home, and Dad would most likely let her stay here, but the last thing Meg wants to sit through is dinner with Dean's family.

At least Mr. Winchester just shrugs, and leaves, telling Meg to suit herself, because any girlfriend of Dean's is welcome at their dinner table—and once he's gone, Meg plants another one on Dean, firmly, because she has to reassert some kind of authority over her situation.

"Seriously, though," she hisses. "He and Becky Rosen _both_ said we were going out today—and Ruby thought we were until I set her right, and Lila Beth _still_ probably thinks we are. Why the fuck does fucking _everybody_ think we're _going out_?"

Dean shrugs and kisses her back, nipping at her lower lip. "Hell if I know—maybe they're all hallucinating or it's the gossip mill feeding itself or something." Either way, he takes another, final grope of her ass before letting her slide off his lap. And he smiles at her gently as he says, "See you tomorrow?"


	13. Flush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "pandemics and epidemics."

"Dean, are you sure you're all right?" Cas asks for what must be the fifteenth time today, looking up from his the library table and his paperback copy of _Huckleberry Finn_ and the notes he's supposed to be taking on it for American Lit.

He furrows his brow in that way that Cas always does when something's bothering him, squinting at Dean like he's some kind of puzzle in need of solving, or like Dean's behavior is completely anomalous, or like—God forbid—there might be something wrong with Dean. There's nothing wrong with Dean—if there were, Dean would've noticed by now—and since he hasn't noticed it, then there must be nothing wrong with him. Simple logic, nice and clean, like Cas likes it.

Sure, Dean's throat is sore enough that he hasn't spoken up in class once today. Sure, everything feels hot and flushed and kind of swimming around his head on top of that. Sure, he's barely been able to carry his backpack to and from his classes without everything hurting like his body's on fire and feeling like he's going to fall over—but none of that means anything, right? Never even mind the nausea—Cas and Meg would probably read into that, if Dean mentioned it, but there really isn't anything to read into when just the sight of some foods makes Dean feel like he's going to puke on any normal day—and besides that, Dean hasn't actually thrown up today, not even by his own hand, so he must be _fine_.

Dean turns his attention back down to his Chemistry workbook pages, because he is fine and everything is fine, and well, maybe all the drawings and the figures start to bleed together on the page, and for a moment he feels like the whole world is wobbling back and forth on him, but why would that mean that Dean isn't fine.

Rationally, Dean supposes that he might not be fine. Just after Thanksgiving break and all the Black Friday sales, right at the beginning of December, some really nasty strain of seasonal flu started going around Lawrence High and the middle school. Sam came down with it last week—and he got sick at the same time as Meg's sister, Ruby, which is probably just because they're on the middle school debate team together, but Dean still hasn't stopped giving Sam shit about making out with Ruby—and since Sam was sick and they live in the same house, it only fits that Dean might've gotten sick, too.

But he's fine, so really, Cas should let the fuck up about asking whether or not Dean is okay. Like Cas really needs to deal with it if Dean's _not_ okay, anyway.

Only, Cas doesn't let the fuck up about it, because he's stubborn as Hell. Instead, all he does is glare at Dean and huff and tell him, "Dean, you haven't written anything down on your workbook pages since we sat down here. You've been on the same page for twenty minutes. You barely ate anything at lunch. You look like you're going to pass out and you've been coughing like you're going to start having an attack—go to the nurse's office before I _drag you there_."

"Yeah, I'd like to see you try, Skinny," Dean huffs, with the full knowledge that sure, Cas might be thin, but Cas is also toned up in ridiculous ways, and Cas is probably stronger than he is, and Cas isn't really making an idle threat here. "I just. I'm fine, Cas, I promise—and can you watch my stuff for me? I'll be right back."

It's not that Dean really wants to leave or anything. It's just that he feels like Cas is kicking soccer balls into his stomach over and over and over again—he might actually throw up this time, so he all but runs toward the nearest bathroom. He stumbles in without looking at the sign and heads right for the nearest stall.

*******

Throwing up isn't nearly so much of a relief, doing it like this. Doing it when Dean doesn't _want_ to be doing it.

Doing it when he's all but collapsed on the floor of the bathroom, clinging to the toilet bowl for dear life, hands going white-knuckled around the seat as his stomach empties itself. Each round of gagging feels like getting kicked in the stomach and Dean's muscles twitch—as if the way they're aching wasn't bad enough on its own—as if it wasn't bad enough that Dean hurts down to his bones and everything inside him could just pass out and call it good.

And even when he's pretty sure there isn't any food left to get up, _stuff_ keeps coming—bile and stomach acid and Dean's certain that he sees blood in there. Not a lot of blood, but enough of it that he should probably be worried because bloody vomit probably means that this case of the flu is really, _really_ bad.

(Or else there's something going on with how many times Dean's made himself throw up before—that thought's even scarier than the thought that this case of the flu is really, _really_ bad—Dean's read some things on the Internet about other people who make themselves sick, and how sometimes, they find blood in their vomit. Either way, he should probably be, like, worried or something. He should feel anxiety itching at his nerves instead of just this desire to shut down and sleep for an hour or twenty, sleep until he feels better.)

Worrying would take energy, though, and as soon as his stomach settles down, Dean topples forward onto the U-bend. He just rests there for a moment, even though the stench in the toilet and the taste in his mouth make him feel even more like death warmed up than he already did. It takes him a long moment before he can even summon the strength to flush the evidence away, much less claw his way up off the floor and stumble out of the stall, over to the sink. It's weird, he notices—where did the urinals go? Did he come into the right bathroom? Probably not, just like he screws up everything—though no one could blame him right now, when he can hardly see straight—and with a sigh, Dean glances up in the mirror.

That's when he sees her—Meg, standing right there, leaning against the stalls with her arms crossed over her chest. Her image in the mirror swims around a bit, but it's definitely Meg. No one else has her faux-leather jacket, and no one else can glare at Dean while still managing to look incredibly confused.

"You came in the wrong room," she says as though it really needs to be pointed out. "I already know the answer to this question, so asking it is pretty pointless, but are you feeling okay?"

"Did Cas send you to come look for me?" Dean huffs, washing off his hands, then sticking them under the dryer. Once they're dry, he sticks them back under the sink, just to splash some cold water on his face, which feels better, even if it's only just a little bit. Even if it doesn't really stop Meg's reflection from wobbling or the world from feeling like it's made of jello and Dean could topple over at any second.

Meg sighs and shakes her head. "How could Cas have sent me to do anything when I haven't seen him since lunch?" she points out, and finally makes her way over to Dean, crowds right up into his personal space like Cas would usually do. "I mean it, Dean-o. Are you feeling okay? And don't lie, because I just heard you throwing up just now."

"I'm _fine_ , Meg," Dean snaps more than he means to, with a bit of a whine sneaking into his voice, and when she raises her hand, he pulls back, flinches like she's going to smack him. All she does is rest her palm on his forehead—it's freezing cold, Dean shudders and a chill courses down his spine, and he feels, briefly, like he's going to be sick again—and he wrinkles up his nose, whines more ardently. "Oh, come on, what are you doing now."

"I'm dragging your ass to Nurse McClellan's office, is what I'm _doing_ ," Meg tells him, brow knotted up in what looks like concern. She drops her hand down to his wrist and starts pulling him off, right through the door and down the corridor. "Seriously, Dean, you're burning up. What kind of standards do you have that makes you seriously think this constitutes _fine_?"

Dean doesn't answer that question beyond huffing a bit and mumbling something about how no one needs to put up with this. He knows better than to give Meg a full answer. And sure, she looks slightly ticked off at him as she drags him into Nurse McClellan's office, as she sits him down on one of the cots so they can wait—but she'll get over that, and her briefly being upset with Dean is better than her trying to deny the truth. Dean doesn't need anybody worrying about him. He doesn't deserve to have anybody worrying about him, ever.

*******

Nurse McClellan takes one look at Dean before declaring that he's probably the latest victim of the school's epidemic, and taking his temperature only confirms that.

So she calls his Mom, and Mom leaves work to come and pick Dean up, and Cas brings Dean's things down to Nurse McClellan's office so Dean doesn't have to go all the way down to the library to get them back. He and Meg act like they're going to hang around—Dean has no idea why; best friends or not, there's no reason for them to go and expose themselves to his germs any more than they already have by kissing him before the symptoms showed—but Nurse McClellan shoos them out, tells them to get to class and let Dean sleep. She doesn't let anyone in until Mom shows up.

They barely talk as Mom takes him to the doctor so they can get a prescription for antibiotics then down to CVS to get the script filled, Dean mostly slumps against the passenger-side window of her Toyota and tries to stay awake, tries to keep himself from upchucking all over the car. As soon as they've got his meds, Mom takes him home and orders Dean to get his butt upstairs and get some rest.

One of the only things that's going to help him get healthy is Dean sucking it up and letting someone take care of him—he gets that, but he still feels guilty as shit, slipping out of his clothes and into bed. He should feel guilty, too—he made Mom leave work to come take care of him, and unappreciative as ever, he can't keep the chicken noodle soup she makes him down.

There's an upside to all this, Dean guesses, and it's that… well, if he can't keep anything down, then there's no way he can gain any weight while he's too sick to jog, too sick to even update his blogs without coughs wracking his whole body. And he doesn't have to worry about hiding it when he throws up.

One time, he leaves the bathroom door wide open, he doesn't bother running the shower to cover up the sounds of him gagging up the dinner he forced himself to choke down—when he comes up out of the bowl, Dad's standing right there in the doorway, watching him, and the look on his face isn't one of shock or concern or _Dean, how could you do this to yourself_ —no, Dad just looks kind of resigned and he wanders off with a huff, telling Dean to go get in bed once he's finished throwing up.

"You're gonna need some damn sleep after all that mess," Dad sighs. "Could hear you down the hallway, and it sounds like it _hurts_."

Dean doesn't bother telling Dad that it does hurt—that every inch of his body aches right now, even with the medication and the resting and the Mom-ordered going easy on himself—because in all likelihood, Dad doesn't really care. He's been harder and harder to pin down, lately—more and more absent from the house, and frankly, Dean's half-shocked that Dad made it to dinner tonight at all—and having to hear about how much pain Dean's in would probably just upset him. Make him shoulder things that he doesn't have to shoulder.

So, Dean just nods and tells him, _yes, sir_ , brushes out his mouth so that it doesn't taste like death, then wanders back to bed and flops out underneath his comforter. He curls up tight around himself and waits for sleep to clobber him upside the head.

The biggest upside to this whole, "being home from school sick" thing is that Dean has copious amounts of time to himself. Mom can't stay home from work to look after him—not after she took a few days off to look after Sam, because he's eleven and couldn't stay home by himself, even if he weren't sick—so Dean has free run of the house. After a day or so, his head clears up, for the most part, so he gets all of his homework done, when Cas and Meg bring it to him.

But better than this—so much better than this that it isn't even funny—Dean has time to update his blog without worrying that someone's going to walk in on him. Well, one of his blogs, at any rate—the one that Cas and Meg don't know about (to say nothing of anybody else knowing it exists), the one where Dean talks about things other than homework and _Doctor Sexy_ and school gossip and how much the future terrifies him but he can't admit that to anyone (except for Cas and Meg and the handful of online strangers who read his stupid prattling).

No, this blog is different—most of the contents are his inspirations (pictures of Cas without his shirt on with his lean, toned abs out there for everyone to see, pictures of Meg in different outfits that show off how thin she is, pictures of ballerinas and models, mostly male and some women, who look like they have the self-control to never eat at all), but there are other things on this blog, too. Like Dean's food diary (every intake and each upchuck, painstakingly recorded, no matter how brutal the honesty has to be) and a record of his weigh-ins and sometimes longer posts, all full of thoughts that he can't air on his other blog because no one else would understand them. They'd think that he's wrong, that something's wrong with him; they'd try to make him stop, or maybe even get him committed like Gabriel was that one time.

Emily, one of the people he met through this blog, said it best: you have to be like them to really understand them; if you don't have these kinds of thoughts—the kinds of thoughts that professionals would call disordered—then there's no way you can understand them. And Dean would sooner die than show this blog to anybody who's not in the know about his habits, as it were.

But with no one around the house, everything's perfect—he can blog in peace. He can take his self-portraits in the mirror, with his little digital camera, and he can quietly upload them, with attached commentary about how disgusting his body still is—how he still has so much weight that he still needs to lose—and no one's any the wiser because no one's in the house to catch him. Dean can even leave his bedroom door open as he takes off his shirt to take his measurements, to take his pictures of what he looks like without clothes on, because clothes obscure the evidence of his body. They hide the facts of things, like how, even though he's thinned out a lot since July—to the point that almost everything he owns is baggy on him now—Dean still has a soft, round belly. Dean still has flabby thighs that look nothing like the models' or the ballerinas'.

The only thing his clothes don't hide is his double-chin, for whatever all that's worth. It's not worth a lot to Dean, since he still looks fat in basically everything—which is unavoidable, he guesses; he still _is_ fat, that's the whole problem—but either way, it's really nice, having some privacy to talk to the people who understand what Dean's doing and why he's doing it.

 _Just be careful once you get over your flu_ , Emily tells him in a comment. _Sure, you're throwing up all the time, and you'll lose a bunch of weight like that, but most of that's gonna be water weight. It'll come right back on once you get back to your normal schedule. That happened to me, once. Took me completely by surprise. So watch out for it and don't get discouraged if it happens to you—you're doing so well, sweetie, I'd hate for you to backslide just because you got tripped up over putting weight back on after being sick._

And Dean keeps that advice in mind for the whole rest of the week that he spends home sick. He keeps it in mind over the weekend, when he loses his privacy but still manages to make his posts. He keeps it in mind on Monday morning, when Mom takes his temperature and deems him healthy enough to go back to school. But more than anything, he keeps it in mind when he climbs out of the shower and turns to face the bathroom scale—he won't let himself get contented with this, no matter what the results of his several days of illness are.

But Dean would be lying if he said that his heart doesn't jump in delight when the bright red digital numbers blink up at him: _218.5_ —eleven-and-a-half pounds. He's lost eleven-and-a-half pounds from what he was averaging before he got sick, and putting a number on it makes Dean's feet feel lighter, makes his chest flush and feel brighter, warmer, happier.

Dean begs off to the boys' room during homeroom and makes himself sick up his breakfast. He can't let himself get contented with this apparent progress. Like Emily said, it probably only happened because he was sick. It'll take more work for Dean to make it an official loss.


	14. My Body Is A Cage (until use and old age accept them)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, "cages."
> 
>  **This chapter contains:** references to/discussion of eating disorders, mental health issues (bipolar disorder and arguable self-harm [drinking alcohol while taking psychiatric medications that advise avoiding alcohol], references to a suicide attempt), gender/body dysphoria (experienced by a character who is written as genderqueer, but who doesn't identify as such explicitly, due to not knowing the term), dysfunctional family dynamics and emotional abuse (primarily through invalidation and ableism with regard to mental health issues and neuropsychological conditions, minor gaslighting); depictions of underage drinking and intoxicated cuddling.
> 
> Also, most of the universities referenced in this chapter are real places (at least, University of Kansas/KU, Kansas State, and Johnson County Community College are all real places), and I did some cursory research on them, but their descriptions bear no real resemblance to the actual places, beyond the fact that KU and JCCC are both in Lawrence.
> 
> As far as I know, Mount Olivine College and Rebecca Lawson College are not real places (though there's apparently a Mount Olive College in North Carolina); I just made them up and, although they were inspired by two real-life universities, any actual resemblance to any real-life universities or the people who attend and teach at said universities is (mostly) unintentional.
> 
> The subtitle of this chapter is a reference from Tolkien's _The Two Towers_.

Valentine's Day, 2009, is a Saturday and Dean's supposed to spend it babysitting Sam.

Dean's supposed to spend the whole weekend babysitting Sam, for point of fact. He's sixteen, now, and has been for three weeks. He got his driver's license on his birthday and everything—or, well, he passed his driver's test and got the little piece of paper that filled in for his license until the real one showed up in the mail, which is all just a big ball of semantics, really. And since the license means that Dean can mostly fend for himself, Mom and Dad decided to take a little trip into Kansas City for Valentine's Day, leaving Dean with money and the keys to the Toyota and the responsibility to look out for his little brother. As though he'd ever do anything else but look out for Sam, in this kind of situation.

(Why Mom and Dad are going on this trip into Kansas City, Dean doesn't really want to think about. Valentine's Day is the perfect excuse for it, he guesses—but the fights are getting more and more frequent, and harder to ignore, which says a lot, since Dean could never really tune them out in the first place.

Dad's been coming home later and later. He's working longer and longer hours down at the garage, but the overtime pay he should be bringing home is mysteriously missing. And in the midst of everything else, there are all these little details that Mom keeps bringing up and maybe reading too much into. At least, Dean hopes she's reading too much into them—they might be nothing, after all, they're circumstantial evidence, at best.

But maybe she isn't, though, because Dean's pretty sure that, circumstantial or not, Alex Cabot or Casey Novak could make a compelling case out of the evidence, if life were an episode of _SVU_ : receipts that Dad can't explain, from meals where more than one person was eating them; toys in his jacket pockets that don't belong to Dean or Sam, because they don't have the _Harry Potter_ LEGO sets and they haven't played with the red plastic Monkeys-In-A-Barrel in years; the missing overtime pay, which gets especially meaningful on all the nights when he stays out later than the garage is open but doesn't come home smelling like a trip to the bar with Mike and the guys.

The only issue is: what would Alex Cabot and Casey Novak be proving when they made this case? Dean has no idea—well, he has some kind of idea, but he doesn't want to think about it. It's crazy to think about it, because Dad would never do that. Sure, he and Mom fight sometimes—but they've said it themselves that married couples just fight sometimes—and anyway, Dad loves Mom more than anything, so he'd never _do that_ sort of thing to her, he wouldn't.)

Mom and Dad leave on Friday night, after they both get home from work and order Dean and Sam a pizza (as though Dean's really allowed to eat pizza—he gets a slice-and-a-half down before he excuses himself and makes himself sick up), and on Saturday morning, Dean cooks up eggs and bacon for breakfast. He doesn't intend to keep these down, either, and luckily for him, he doesn't even have to take precautions to keep Sam from catching him in the act of jamming his fingers down his throat.

Once breakfast's done, Sam goes down the block to Andy's house, saying that he, Jake, and Andy need to work on some big science project that they've been buddied up on and he might even stay over there tonight, he'll call Dean to let him know. Which maybe shouldn't make Dean half as happy as it does—after all, Sam's a good kid, and Dean's probably supposed to like spending time with his brother, he always used to like spending time with his brother—but anymore, nothing compares to taking his measurements and finding that he's lost more inches. Nothing compares to weighing himself and seeing that he's lost a few more pounds. Nothing compares to having the privacy to do these things without worrying that someone's going to find him and wonder what he's doing.

And on Valentine's Day, 2009, Dean gets the best revelation that he could hope for. It's been about a week-and-a-half since he weighed himself last—because Emily says that it's tempting but inaccurate to weigh himself every single day, and no matter how much he wants to keep careful track of things, he can't let himself be swayed by wildly fluctuating numbers—and when he steps up on the scale, the red digital numbers blink up at him: _197_.

It's still too much—Dean still weighs too much, and he more than knows it—but Dean still breaks out in a face-straining grin. This is the first time he's clocked in at under two-hundred pounds in far too long, and it deserves to be celebrated. Not that he can tell anybody why he's celebrating—but that doesn't stop him from calling Cas and Meg and telling them to come over, that he's got a great idea for how they can spend their Valentine's Day, since he knows the two of them don't have any other plans. Namely: breaking into Dad's liquor cabinet sounds like a good plan—Dean might get in trouble for it, come tomorrow, but it'll be worth it for some fun in the meantime.

And sure, alcohol is empty calories that Dean can't as easily puke up—but he's been good, hasn't he? Doesn't he deserve a treat? Doesn't he deserve to feel nice, for once, instead of trapped inside this body, the way he always is?

*******

"I really don't think we're supposed to be doing this—or that it's a very good idea."

"Yeah, Cas, you've said that, like, fifty times by now—I think we get the message that you think this is a bad idea."

Cas sighs, and rolls his eyes, and slouches back into the armchair in the living room. He gives Dean a long-suffering look and a pointed arch of his eyebrows, then waves his hands as if bidding Dean to go on, then—keep trying to free the Jack Daniels from its cage. They couldn't find the key into the liquor cabinet, so Dean's using one of Mom's bobby pins to try and pick the lock.

…Only, he's never picked a lock before, so mostly, this involves him wiggling the pin around and hoping that the tumblers click into place and the door opens up, while Meg perches on the arm of the sofa and leans over his shoulder and periodically asks if he's any closer to getting them into the good stuff. She doesn't see any problems with breaking into Dad's liquor—the way she put it, she's not even that excited about drinking it, because who knows, it might taste the way that shoe polish smells—but she's still pissed that Dad implied that dating Cas would be a bad thing, so drinking his whiskey and making him have to go buy more of it sounds like a great plan to her.

And ever the goody-two-shoes, Cas has spent the whole time since he got here complaining about this or that, or pointing out that this might not be as good an idea as Dean and Meg seem to think it is. He's brought up the fact that they are almost definitely going to get caught—because they won't be able to lock the cabinet back up again, and there's no guarantee that Gabriel will help them buy a new bottle of Jack, and putting water in the whiskey probably won't fool John Winchester, who considers himself something of a self-educated connoisseur—and he's brought up the fact that they might have to deal with hangovers, and he's brought up the fact that Cas and Meg will probably eventually need to go home to their parents, who will most likely be able to smell the liquor on them, even if they stay the night at Dean's.

The topic he's moved onto now is social propriety, as though that's ever stopped him and Dean and Meg from doing anything before. Still, he insists at them, "Couldn't we at least wait until five o'clock? Mother always tells Gabriel that it's impolite and terribly gauche to drink liquor before five o'clock."

"Well, it's five o'clock _somewhere_ , isn't it?" Meg points out. "Besides, why's she have to tell that to Gabriel? I thought he wasn't supposed to get into the booze on his medication, period."

"He's not—and you really need to stop reading pill bottles that don't belong to you." The fact that he can say this with so little inflection is some kind of worrying, and Dean pauses trying to pick the lock so he can search Cas's face for some kind of indication of how he's feeling—unfortunately, Cas's face is as much of a question mark as his voice. Cas shrugs as though nothing's happening and somehow manages to slump into the armchair more than he was already slumped, splaying his long legs out ahead of him. He fusses with the hem of his snugly fitting _Trekkies do it in the Final Frontier_ t-shirt—some gag gift from Anna, she got it last year for Cas's birthday—and spends a long, quiet moment just blinking down at his lap.

Then, he's blinking up at Dean and Meg again, and wrinkling his nose like he has no idea why they're staring at him. Which, considering it's Cas and social cues are difficult for him, he probably doesn't. So Dean prods him a little, asks what's going on with Gabriel and if Cas wants to talk about it—to which, Cas just shrugs again.

"I have no real _idea_ what's going on with Gabriel, that's rather the problem," Cas explains, voice flat, blinking vacantly at Dean and then at Meg. "Because I'm worried about him, but I haven't the slightest idea what's happening."

"Well, I know _that's_ not true," Meg pipes up and huffs, crossing one of her legs over the other, dangling her bare foot there and rotating it on the ankle. "Cas, your family talks about everything, to everybody, all the time. I mean, sure, sometimes you guys keep secrets from each other—but they never _stay_ secrets, is what I'm saying. I mean, I knew that Anna started dating that Emily chick she met while visiting colleges before you did, all because your Mother decided to ask for _my_ opinion on Anna being into girls and whether or not she should've guessed that when Anna wanted to go to a women's college."

"Which is still completely ridiculous of my Mother, and if she asks you that again, I'll thank you to continue _telling_ her that it's ridiculous."

"Of course I'm going to continue telling her that it's ridiculous," Meg says. "I mean, shit—I'm probably, like… bisexual-ish? I think? Anyway, I'm not straight, and _I'm_ thinking about going to a women's college, but it's not so I can pick up chicks—and it's totally absurd to think Anna wants to go to Mount Olivine so she can pick up chicks. But anyway, my point is that you know more about what's going on with Gabriel than you're telling us. And I think it's probably stressing you out. Just a dollop."

Cas huffs, and for a moment, he says nothing—he just looks from Meg down to Dean, and the only thing that Dean can do is shrug and suppose that Meg has a point, Cas. And that it's probably better for Cas to, y'know, vocalize what's going on for him right now. Not like Dean and Meg really give a shit about Gabriel's problems—not that they think his problems don't matter or anything, it's just that they care more about Cas—but, well. If Cas needs to talk about shit, then Dean and Meg are here for him, he knows that, right.

(This is the only thing Dean's going to allow himself to do, because the only other thing he wants to do is incredibly problematic—not least because it might clue Cas and Meg in to what Dean does on his secret blog. Besides, it's silly—like really, Emily is a common enough name, and there are probably lots of girls named Emily who want to go to Mount Olivine College in Massachusetts, and there are probably lots of girls named Emily who met lots of girls named Anna while at a summer program for getting college credits racked up while still in high school.

There's probably no way in Hell that Anna's Emily and Dean's Emily are the same person—even thinking about that possibility probably makes Dean nine different kinds of crazy. Dean's just reading too much into simple coincidences, he probably gets that gene from Mom.)

Sighing again, Cas rolls his eyes and gives the pair of them a Look like he has no idea what they're talking about—but as he folds his arms over his chest, he starts telling them, "Fine, if you both truly want to hear about Gabriel so much. First, he was going to go back to school—he was putting in applications to KU and Kansas State and everything, and it seemed like everything was going so well, and his medications were balanced out quite nicely for him, and…"

Cas shrugs and takes a moment, probably to look for the words that he really wants, then goes on, "Well, he would've preferred to go back out to New York for school, but Mother, Father, and his therapist all believed that was a very questionable idea, and I can't entirely disagree with them. KU would keep him close to home since the campus is right here in Lawrence, and he wouldn't have to find a new therapist or psychiatrist or anything like that, but then he never finished the application, and then one of his professors forgot to send in their recommendation letter, and he's just…"

Cas pauses and gasps up several deep breaths—which is fair enough, since going as long as he just did without breathing would leave Dean gasping and reaching for his inhaler—and he cards his fingers back through his hair before starting up again: "He's just… He's my brother, and I worry about him. And he's at Johnson County Community College right now—because Mother and his therapist thought that getting his associate's degree would help him transfer to KU—and I think he likes his classes well enough, except for his Composition course? Which is apparently fairly remedial. And Kali—erm, the woman he's seeing, her name is Kali—is quite lovely, even if Mother and Father don't like her much…"

There shouldn't be anywhere left for Cas to slouch in the chair, but somehow, he manages to find a way. "But he won't stop complaining about how he should be in graduate school by now—as though _bipolar disorder_ isn't a completely valid reason for why his academic trajectory got interrupted. Never mind the atrocious way that his first made itself evident, and the suicide attempt, and… Well, with Anna having sent out her college applications, and with me looking at colleges, and with Michael looking at graduate schools—all of them Ivy League or comparable to it—and getting engaged, I just… I think that Gabriel feels rather inadequate next to the rest of us, or inferior, or something to that effect, _but_ …"

Cas's fingers are wound so tightly in the hem of his t-shirt that Dean can't believe he hasn't ripped the fabric yet. "But of course, he won't _talk_ about any of it with anybody. He won't even talk to Luke about it, not that Luke is much in the business of talking to _anyone_ outside of holidays—and maybe Gabriel talks to Kali about things, but she won't tell any of us what he says, all I've ever heard from her about him is that Gabriel feels like he is _caged_ in Lawrence, and I don't think she meant to tell me anything at all, it was just a slip—and frankly…"

Groaning a bit, Cas knocks his head back against the chair. "Well, _frankly_ , I think that Gabriel _resents_ the fact that I'm thinking about applying to Rebecca Lawson—not just thinking about it, but seriously considering it. And I don't think he cares that I've been thinking about this possibility since I saw the campus during his campus visit years ago—I think that he thinks that I'm trying to show him up, as opposed to being legitimately interested in their curriculum and their courses and their promise of academic freedom."

Cas huffs by way of wrapping up, and shrugs, and before things can get too quiet—before Cas can get any sort of idea about them being done with this conversation just because his monologue is over—Dean pipes up, "Wait—Rebecca Lawson? Isn't that the place Gabriel dropped out of?"

"Yes, it is," Cas says. "Hence the possible resentment. Because, obviously, I care so little about my brother—not to mention my own education and my own future—that I would intentionally look into applying to the school he loved but dropped out of, just to prove that I can hack it there when he couldn't. Because—again, rather _obviously_ —I think he dropped out because of some… I don't know, _deficiency_ , or that he couldn't have successfully managed to complete his degree there, if we'd worked out what was plaguing him in time for him to get back there without applying all over again. Because, **_obviously_** , I don't care about my brother at all and think negatively of him because he's dealing with a seriously debilitating mental illness that has effectively derailed significant aspects of his life and his plans for himself."

"Yeah, as opposed to thinking negatively of him because he's a royal _dick_ to everybody," Dean says—and regrets it as soon as Cas turns on the sad kitten eyes. "Which is just… I didn't mean that he's _not_ dealing with some serious shit—he is definitely dealing with some serious shit, and I feel for him on that count—but I mean… I just don't like the way he talks to you and Anna, is that so bad of me?"

"Well, honestly?" Meg pipes up with a sigh, shoving herself back so she can topple onto the sofa, still dangling her legs over the arm. "Honestly, I can kind of understand where he's coming from? Not that I think he's right, or that the way he treats you and Anna is okay—but with the way your parents talk to _him_? Going on about how his mood swings inconvenience _them_ , and how he has no idea what he's talking about ever, he's probably just having an _episode_ , and everything like that? I can kinda see where he's coming from, and why he might jump to the worst possible conclusion about you wanting to go to the same place he did."

"Yes, I've considered that perspective already," Cas says, sitting up straight again and curling his legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees and peering at Dean and Meg as though he's looking at them from far away. "And I've tried to tell Mother and Father that they're not helping him stay well by invalidating his point of view and constantly centering the discussion on how his illness impacts _them_ … but they just told me that I probably didn't understand all the _nuances_ of the situation because I'm _autistic_ , and of _course_ , they would _never_ talk to Gabriel like that, stop making up _stories_ , Caspian—never mind that you two, Anna, Kali, and Michael have all _also_ heard them doing this to him, and that was while they were _behaving_ themselves for the sake of the company…"

He trails off into a heavy bone-shaking sigh and knocks his forehead against his knees—and for all Dean can guess how Cas might be feeling (for all he can guess because he knows how _he_ feels after Dad pulls out some similar sort of bullshit on him and Sam), it's still… really _weird_ , seeing Cas as vulnerable as this. Seeing him with all of his defenses down, and when he's not pretending to be okay. Dean can't see Meg's face, can't see if she's staring at Cas too or not, but she's stopped jiggling her feet, and Dean can only guess that she's thinking the same things that he is: that Cas's parents are assholes, that Cas has been bottling all this up for far too long and that it's not any kind of good for him, that they've probably somehow seriously failed their best friend by not noticing—or noticing but not really asking about—the kind of shit his parents pull and how he's dealing with it all, with any of it.

And watching Cas hug himself around the shins, so tightly that it has to hurt—listening to him take deep, measured breaths in a way that sounds like he's distressingly familiar with the process—Dean has to wonder if the way that Cas is dealing with all this might not be best described as, _he kind of isn't—not really, not in any meaningful ways, at any rate_.

It's entirely possible—no, _probable_ —that Cas is basically stuck in some kind of cage, his parents' cage, and college might be the only way he's ever getting out.

That suspicion just gets stronger when Cas looks up from his knees with a wobbly, blatantly fake smile. He huffs a bit and waves a hand in the direction of the liquor cabinet. "Well… that was certainly… an _interesting_ turn of things," he says, sounding more tired than any almost-sixteen-year-old has any right to sound. "…Are we still going to break into the liquor cabinet? Don't let me stop you, if you're really, _truly_ set on it."

"I think we're gonna just… do something else for Valentine's Day instead," Dean says. "You're probably right, Cas—breaking into the bottle of Jack's just a really bad idea."

*******

They get into the beer instead of the liquor cabinet, because Dad keeps the beer in the fridge out in the garage, unlocked and unprotected and so much easier to get at. And maybe it's not really potent enough to get them _drunk_ drunk, but after they down a few cans each, Meg and Cas get chuckling—snickering about anything that comes up, even when it isn't funny—and Dean's whole chest feels light and fuzzy, to say nothing of how his head's kind of swimming.

Which, now that he thinks about it, might be due to the same stuff that causes the pangs he sometimes gets behind his eyes—sicking up most of what you eat is bound to have some downsides, he guesses.

Not that this, here, right now, is that much of a downside. Being able to get intoxicated faster sounds pretty great to Dean. Especially if it means he gets to feel all warm and flushed and contented, the way he is right now.

"And y'know, the thing isn't that I don't understand where Gabriel's coming from, or I don't empathize with him, or any of that shit?" Dean's draped across the sofa with his head in Meg's lap, and he's only half-aware of what he's saying in the first place, but he just keeps talking while Meg runs her fingers through his hair. "Because I totally empathize with him… the whole thing about feeling caged? And feeling stuck in a cage, or caged up, or y'know, things like that."

"You don't feel caged up in Lawrence, though, do you?" Cas says, and pulls a face like he's worried about what Dean's answer might be. "Because if you're thinking about trying to leave before we go to college, then… I might need to be very put out at you."

"No, no, it's not like that, I mean…" Dean wobbles as he tries to sit up, and ends up toppling to the floor for his troubles. At least the carpet's soft underneath him—and at least Cas and Meg get it into their heads to crawl down there and join him. As she wraps an arm around Dean's waist (which makes his insides squirm, for all he stays perfectly still), Meg says that the floor looks kind of comfortable, now that Dean's put the idea in her head, and as Cas nestles up to Dean's side, he quite agrees—and bids Dean to tell them what he means, exactly.

Dean sighs, draping one arm around Cas's shoulders and the other around Meg's. "It's complicated, like," he says, which just makes him feel stupid (not that tons of other things don't manage that anyway). "I guess I just know the feeling like you're caged in something that you don't want to be in? Like… that's how my whole body feels. That's how my body feels all the fucking time."

"If this is some weird thing about your weight again," Meg says, lifting up her head and wrinkling her nose at Dean. "If this is something about you being _chubby_ … well. I'm just going to… well, I'm probably just going to cuddle you until you shut up about it."

"It's not even that, though, it's just…" Dean sighs. Even if he were stone cold sober right now, he wouldn't really have the words to describe what's going on and what he's feeling. "Y'know how there's all this _stuff_ that guys are supposed to do? And because I'm supposed to be a guy, then I'm supposed to do it? I mean, I don't hate doing it, but… maybe I don't want to do it. And I'm not a _girl_ , I don't _feel_ like a girl, but I don't feel like a guy either, and my body is constantly some kind of _weird_ for me, and it makes no _sense_ , and I'm just… caged up in this body, and I can't ever get out? But I can make the cage a little bit _nicer_ , I guess."

"Well, for whatever it's worth," Cas says as he nuzzles at Dean's neck, "I'm of the opinion that you have a very lovely cage. And that, even if you didn't, you are very wonderful in certain other capacities."

Dean sighs and squeezes Cas's shoulder, then squeezes Meg's, just to be fair and make sure his attention's split evenly between them both. He's not sure if it's worth anything, in a practical sense—after all, he knows Cas is just being nice to spare his feelings; Dean's body is the furthest thing from lovely in the entire world—but anyway, it's nice to hear. And anyway, he can still make the most out of being stuck inside his body-cage—he'll make the most of it, even if it kills him.


End file.
